Doctors

When you need emergency medical treatment and you are on a gurney with doctors and nurses leaning over you are at your most vulnerable, you do not want to hear that it is against their religion to treat someone like you.

Or you are in your primary care physician office and he refuses medically necessary treatment because you are a sinner. Lambda Legal is suing a doctor for doing just that,

Lambda Legal Sues Doctor and Clinic for Denying Medical Care to Transgender Woman
By Lambda Legal
April 16, 2014

Yesterday, in the United States District Court for the Central District of Illinois, Urbana Division, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit on behalf of Naya Taylor, a transgender woman denied medical care after she requested hormone replacement therapy. The lawsuit alleges a violation of the ACA’s non-discrimination provisions prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sex, (which includes gender identity), and requires that clinics receiving federal funds treat transgender patients in the same manner as they would any patient under their care.

Kenneth Upton, Senior Counsel for Lambda Legal, said:

    The provisions of the Affordable Care Act are clear: doctors receiving federal funds cannot discriminate in providing patient care just because a person is transgender. Patients such as Naya Taylor place their health and well-being in a doctor’s hands. Ms. Taylor asked for her doctor to provide services similar to those provided to other clinic patients who are not transgender and the doctor and clinic refused, posing a significant risk to Ms. Taylor’s health. The ACA’s non-discrimination provisions were intended to ensure appropriate medical care for transgender people, a community that already faces a disproportionate amount of discrimination, violence and suicide rates.

When a doctor takes the Hippocratic Oath there is no clause in the oath that says they treat patients with “only patients with the same beliefs.” The AMA says that,

A physician may decline to undertake the care of a patient whose medical condition is not within the physician's current competence. However, physicians who offer their services to the public may not decline to accept patients because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other basis that would constitute invidious discrimination.

The doctor originally said to Ms. Taylor that she was not trained in cross gender hormone treatments, but the clinic later told her that the clinic “does not have to treat people like you.”

Once a doctor or clinic or hospital accepts federal funding they agree not to discriminate against anyone, there is no clause for a religious exemption, everyone who walks through their doors must treated equally. A doctor who does not treat patients who do not share their religious beliefs should maybe look for another job.