All Veterans are entitled to medical care, but that has changed under the Trump administration. The new guidelines even target unmarried veterans, Democrats, and others. This clusterfuck is yet another example of Donald J. Trump trying to divide us as a country. That could explain why the military members at his Big Boy Parade on Saturday seemed to want to be anywhere else but there, and it almost appeared that they were displaying a form of silent protest.
Via The Guardian:
Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.
The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.
Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.
Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.
Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity, documents reviewed by the Guardian show. The changes also affect chiropractors, certified nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.
Oh, this is cute. They’re just “defending women.”
In making the changes, VA officials cite the president’s 30 January executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. The primary purpose of the executive order was to strip most government protections from transgender people. The VA has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.
It’s obvious what this administration is doing. If you’re a Democrat, you can be barred from working at VA hospitals. Or if you’re not married. Or if you’re in a union. So, only MAGA medical staff are allowed.
During Doug Collins’s confirmation hearing for his nomination as VA Secretary, he almost seemed to care about Veterans’ needs. Almost.
