Biden administration restores protections for gay and transgender Americans seeking health care
Biden administration restores protections for gay and transgender Americans seeking health care
The Biden administration announced a new rule Friday expanding safeguards against potential discrimination of gay and transgender Americans seeking medical care, in a reversal of Trump-era limitations that nixed federal health protections for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
Is anyone keeping track of all the stuff they've gotten done this past week? Between Net Neutrality, flight cancelation policy, non-compete clauses, and this, a lot has happened.
51Must be an election coming up.
Biden has been President now for nearly 4 full years.
-20“The wheel of democracy turns slowly.”
It takes awhile to get the right people in the right agencies to enact the right policies in a way that won't get overturned. It's much better than the alternative too.
12
Why would medical care ever be withheld from anyone?! (checks notes) oh because America hates it's none wealthy and powerful people
12But Biden isn’t doing anything!
8Both sides are the same!
7To be completely honest I see this comment sarcastically significantly more often than not. I mean I can't remember the last time I've opened a political post and this wasn't the top comment.
3Because it's a constant reminder.
Democrats aren't perfect. But when a conservative gets elected, things get shittier.
7Not if the post is about Gaza.
1
Wonderful news. It should also be noted that it took Biden almost a whole election cycle to reverse Trump era decisions.
5First of all, it's not like Biden sat down and wrote these himself. Appointees by Biden at the health and human service administration directed these rules be written by civil servants who work at the department. Changes to regulations have to follow the processes laid out in the laws originally passed by congress giving the agency the authority to write that regulation. Usually that involves a long process of research, mandatory waiting periods, comments, legal reviews, votes by administrators, etc. These new rules began to be drafted in January 2022. Here's all about 600 pages of them. It's not something like, Biden rolled out of bed this morning and decided to reverse lgbtq discrimination in healthcare finally to help himself in the election. The rule this is replacing/updating for instance had work on it begin in 2015 that didn't finish until 2020.
If the complex processes for these new regulations aren't followed then they aren't drawing their power from any law, and they'll be struck down by courts in a heartbeat. This happened to a lot of Trump's incompetent administrators who had a lot of hastily passed or incorrectly passed regulations that didn't survive legal review.
51This is something people often do not realize. Proper process is slow and nothing for sure works UNTIL it gets challenged. A law could be on the books for 50 years but it might as well have been passed yesterday if they are enacting it for the first time. Until someone is actually effected it's basically inert... and establishing precedent can be a fucking mess.
Creating a law with teeth that can not be easily challenged for poor phrasing, unintended exemptions or loopholes takes time. If a law is written that doesn't correctly follow the correct proceedure for it's original implementation it can turn out to be the legal equivalent of a temporary tattoo.
That was kind of the only saving grace of the Trump presidency- he is incredibly shit at working inside the law. When people bang on about "How good he was on economic affairs" they don't realize how all of his international trading stunts only lasted as long as the court preparations to refute them. Him passing his tariffs and "winning" on trade deals was big press but those deals being dismantled and damages being sought barely made the papers.
It wasn't like the US's international court lawyers didn't try and defend those deals under Biden. They really tried. But when what you defend is hastily scribed garbage legislation made as a political stunt you're fucked.
2
it took Biden almost a whole election cycle to reverse Trump era decisions.
Do you think Congress (negotiations, etc.) had anything to do with that delay?
7Saved it for now so it'd be fresh in voter's minds ... which I kind of understand from a 24 hour new cycle standpoint, but from a humanity standpoint it sucks.
-15They've been doing stuff like this non-stop since he was elected. It just takes time, especially when you're trying to do things right instead of just breaking shit, plus there's tons of obstruction you need to deal with and many appointed positions last more than a term so you need to Wait for new positions to open up to get a majority on a lot of boards. If you want to make this argument the burden of proof is on you to check that they didn't have hurdles that prevented them from doing it sooner.
14It takes more time to enact legislation than to repeal it. Biden’s barely made a dent in the 111 climate regulations Trump repealed. He single-handedly brought our climate policy back a decade.
13Let the materialist needs of the people wait and suffer and die for the end of election cycle "freshness". US politics straight up suck.
-3