An Executive Order from Trump Now Allows VA Doctors to Refuse Care to Democrats

Okay, so what the hell is going on here? From The Guardian:

Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (V.A.) 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 V.A. 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 V.A. 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. In making the changes, V.A. officials cite the president’s January 30 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 V.A. has since ceased providing most gender-affirming care and forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender,” from clinical settings.

That’s not the worst of it, although it’s pretty damned bad. This is the worst of it:

They “seem to open the door to discrimination on the basis of anything that is not legally protected,” said Dr. Kenneth Kizer, the V.A.’s top healthcare official during the Clinton administration. He said the changes open up the possibility that doctors could refuse to treat veterans based on their “reason for seeking care—including allegations of rape and sexual assault—current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and personal behavior such as alcohol or marijuana use.”

I seem to recall a certain president of the United States saying just the other day to a very thin crowd that there has been nothing like the U.S. Army in the history of the world. (There’s certainly nothing like it in the history of his family, but never mind). But if you happen to have been part of the absolute greatest fighting force in the history of the known universe, and you happened to acquire a case of PTSD during your service, and now you’ve smoked a little weed and voted for Democrats, the VA can show you the door because the administration has gone batshit crazy about trans people and is “protecting women.” People like you just come with the deal. “God bless the U.S. Army,” the president concluded. God help the people who served.