Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and two other AGS are leading a coalition of 23 state attorney generals — or “almost half of America,” as PinkNews put it — in a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its ruling to remove anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ patients from the Affordable Care Act.
“We need to focus on expanding access to care — not on rolling it back,” said Healey in a July 20 press statement from her office. “We are suing to ensure our residents don’t face unnecessary or discriminatory barriers in accessing the health care services they need.”
Along with Healey, Attorney Generals Letitia James of New York and Xavier Becerra of California are leading up the lawsuit.
The US AGs lawsuit is the latest among other federal cases filed against the administration’s ruling, including those by the Human Rights Campaign, the Boston-based GLAD (GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders) and a broad coalition of health care providers, LGBTQIA+ advocacy groups, and patients.
According to a July 20 report in The Hill:
The administration’s rule, released in June, will roll back implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s Section 1557, which prohibits federally funded health programs and facilities from discriminating against patients based on race, color, national origin, sex, disability or age.
Advocates and health groups said the policy will make it easier for doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to deny care or coverage to transgender and nonbinary patients, as well as women who have had abortions.
The lawsuit alleges that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has unlawfully ignored the harms that the rule will impose on vulnerable populations.
The attorneys general also argue that HHS failed to justify why it abandoned its prior policy, which, among other things, explicitly prohibited discrimination in health care and required health care entities to provide meaningful language assistance services to individuals with limited English proficiency.
The lawsuit also argues that since the rule was released in the middle of a pandemic, it will impose “unjustifiable barriers to health care on vulnerable populations at a time when access to care is as crucial as ever.”
“The COVID-19 pandemic is disproportionately impacting some of our most vulnerable residents, yet this White House is moving forward with a rule that puts these communities at even further risk,” Healey said in a statement.
Not a subscriber? Sign up today for a free subscription to Boston Spirit magazine, New England’s premier LGBT magazine. We will send you a copy of Boston Spirit 6 times per year and we never sell/rent our subscriber information. Click HERE to sign up!
