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Thread: While we don't yet know if SCOTUS will uphold protections for trans workers, we do know that the Trump/Pence administration is continuing its attack on vulnerable people and will soon try to eliminate health care discrimination protections for transgender people
Section 1557 of the ACA, aka the Health Care Rights law, protects people from discrimination in health care and includes protections against sex discrimination. Many courts agree this covers gender identity discrimination healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hbl…
After 6 years and nearly 25k public comments, HHS issued a rule implementing the Health Care Rights Law and, in line with the courts, clarified that discrimination based on sex stereotyping and gender identity is illegal sex discrimination healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hbl…
This was huge! LGBTQ people face high levels of discrimination in health care and according to @amprog @LGBTProgress those who experienced discrimination are nearly 7x more likely to avoid going to the doctor to avoid discrimination americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/ne…
We took a look at how enforcing the rule was working and what complaints looked like. Most involved denials of care or insurance simply bc of the person’s gender identity, not the care they were seeking americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/re… 
Contrary to HHS’s claim eliminating trans protections will save billions, most closed complaints resulted in providers taking voluntary corrective action like working with HHS to institute training or changing policies, improving the quality of care and avoiding costly litigation
The attack on patient protections is part of a broader campaign to privilege certain religious beliefs over patient care. While at Heritage, HHS civil rights director Roger Severino spent his career attacking LGBTQ ppl under the guise of religious liberty dailysignal.com/2016/05/09/doj…
My analysis of his FY2020 budget proposal shows how he plans to use his Conscience and Religious Freedom Division to undermine civil rights protections and health privacy protections to fund his ideological agenda. americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/ne…
Even though just 2% of complaints involved religious liberty/conscience, he wants >$1million more for his Conscience and Religious Freedom Division while slashing millions from civil rights and privacy enforcement even though these complaints keep going up every year
Claims that religious exemptions won’t hurt LGBTQ patients are BS. Here are just a few of the thousands of replies to a request for information from medical providers who notified HHS that they’d use such an exemption to refuse care to trans patients
This is not a coincidence. A new report from @EquityForward reveals Severino continues to work closely with his old employer, the Heritage Foundation, to undermine the rights of LGBTQ people and women rollcall.com/news/congress/…
And it’s not just HHS. Remember Trump’s EO on religious liberty? Jeff Sessions used it to establish a plan to establish a license to discriminate across the entire federal government americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/ne…
Stay tuned for how you can push back against the Trump/Pence administration’s attacks on protections for transgender people!
And remember, the Trump administration's claim that transgender people aren't protected under the ACA is simply not true. Federal court after federal court keeps affirming that the law DOES protect trans people. This is just their latest attack on the ACA healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hbl…
