AUSTIN — Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton was granted a nationwide preliminary injunction by a federal court this month in a lawsuit to impede the Affordable Care Act’s new federal health rules that would require doctors to provide patient services that conflict with their own medical advice or religious beliefs.
The law would require the Employees Retirement System of Texas to alter its insurance coverage for each of its 500,000 participants to perform gender reassignment operations and abortions. However, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services implemented a new rule last July that interprets the definition of “sex” within the Affordable Care Act as a state of mind, not a biological fact, Paxton’s office said in a news release. The new rule also requires all treatments related to sex transition be funded by tax payers and forces physicians and others health care workers to provide contentious services.
“The HHS rule was an attempt by Washington bureaucrats to dictate how doctors should provide medical care,” Paxton told the SE Texas Record.
When the law was enacted, Congress used the term “sex” as a biological category, but with the new law, the Obama administration seeks to redefine that term so that “sex” means one’s “internal sense of gender which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female,” Paxton’s office said in a news release.
“The injunction protects the doctor-patient relationship by preserving a doctor's ability to practice medicine according to his or her medical judgment and conscience,” Paxton told the SE Texas Record. “It also ensures that states may continue to regulate the practice of medicine and protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of doctors and other healthcare workers.”
With the preliminary injunction in place, doctors and medical professionals can proceed as they always have, which is by practicing medicine according to their professional medical judgment and conscience, Paxton said.
Physicians that feel that certain treatments are not in a patient’s best interests could be in violation of the new federal law. In addition, any doctor that does not perform a particular procedure for their own religious or conscientious reasons and who then refers a patient to an alternate health care provider could also be in violation of the new rule.
“The rule authorizes HHS to take any remedial action necessary,” Paxton said.
“It also subjects employers to liability for the actions of their employees, including the loss of federal funding, damages, false claims liability, prohibitions on doing business with the government and other enforcement proceedings by the Department of Justice,” Paxton said. “The rule also authorizes lawsuit by patients who believe a doctor, or the doctor’s employer, has violated the rule.”
Paxton said the state of Texas and others states seek to protect the independent medical judgment of doctors to ensure the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship.
“The complaint asks the court to enter a permanent injunction against the rule, but we hope the new Trump Administration will do the right thing by repealing the rule,” Paxton said.