Doctors and other medical professionals working for the Department of Veterans Affairs can now refuse to treat Democrats and unmarried veterans.
VA hospital bylaws previously barred medical staff from discriminating against patients “on the basis of race, age, color, sex, religion, national origin, politics, marital status or disability in any employment matter,” The Guardian reported.
But now, in response to President Donald Trump’s January executive order on “gender ideology,” “national origin,” “politics,” and “marital status” have been removed from the list, allowing medical staff to deny treatment based on their personal politics, according to the newspaper.
Similarly, the bylaws on staffing decisions no longer prohibit discriminating against candidates on the basis of national origin, sexual orientation, marital status, membership in a union, or affiliation with a “lawful political party.”
With more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, the VA is the largest integrated hospital system in the U.S. It employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually.
In an emailed statement to The Guardian, VA press secretary Peter Kasperowicz did not deny that doctors can refuse to treat patients based on their beliefs or that hospitals could fire physicians based on their marital status or political affiliation.
“All eligible veterans will always be welcome at VA and will always receive the benefits and services they’ve earned under the law,” he said in a statement, calling the rule changes a mere “formality.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out to the VA for comment.
The new rules apply to a wide range of professionals, including psychologists, dentists, optometrists, chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, podiatrists, social workers, and speech therapists.
Trump’s January executive order Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government aimed to strip government protections from transgender people and deny federal funding of “gender ideology.”
It wasn’t immediately clear how the VA made the leap to denying patient care and firing doctors over their political affiliations. Under the new rules, doctors could question veterans about whether they had attended Trump rallies or protests, experts warned.
VA employees told The Guardian that the new rules were imposed without consulting the system’s doctors, which would appear to violate the standards established by the nonprofit organization that accredits hospitals.
The American Medical Association passed a resolution at its annual convention last week urging the VA to “ensure that any amendments to medical staff bylaws are subject to approval by medical staff in accordance with the Joint Commission standards.”
Kasperowicz said the VA had worked with the Joint Commission to make sure the changes would not affect the agency’s accreditation.
Medical ethics experts told The Guardian the new rules are “extremely disturbing and unethical.”
“It seems on its face an effort to exert political control over the VA medical staff,” said Dr. Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. “What we typically tell people in health care is: ‘You keep your politics at home and take care of your patients.’”
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