Trump administration rolls back health protections for transgender people

Proving once again that timing really is everything, the Trump administration finalized a rule that would remove nondiscrimination health care protections for transgender and nonbinary people – in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and Pride Month, NPR reports. 

Federal officials rolled back Obama-era protections that expanded the definition of “sex discrimination” related to health care to encompass discrimination facing people identifying as “male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.” A statement from the Department of Health and Human Services said the new rule – set to go into effect in mid-August –  reverts to “the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.”

But health care providers and LGBT people say the rule will stifle access to needed medical care for an already vulnerable community. A little over one-fifth of transgender people reported avoiding doctors and health care out of fear of discrimination, according to a 2017 poll from NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Another survey from that year, this one from the National Center for Transgender Equality, found that one in four transgender Americans experienced issues with insurance related to their gender identity.

These concerns are acute amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which is hitting many transgender people hard. Racial disparities in COVID-19’s mortality rate means that black transgender people may be even more at-risk. And hundreds of thousands of transgender adults identified by the Williams Institute who are over the age of 65 or have pre-existing health conditions are particularly susceptible to the virus’s impact.