Commentary
Proposed Federal Rule Would Enlist Hospitals In Woke Activism
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Background
On April 18, 2022, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a proposed rule for inpatient and long-term hospitals that will force these medical providers to advance a divisive and potentially discriminatory agenda. This rule is a danger to the health of millions of Americans.
This rule is part of the Biden Administration’s campaign to impose “equity” goals on healthcare, based on the false narrative that healthcare suffers from “systemic racism.” CMS intends to force healthcare providers to gather and report information on patient race, ethnicity, income, geographic location, sexual orientation, and gender identity. This information will feed into vast patient databases that can be used to reward or punish healthcare providers, based on their fidelity to identity politics.
The proposed rule would also establish a process in which hospitals screen and identify patients’ non-medical problems (i.e., housing, difficulty paying bills, transportation needs, etc.). This data will be reported to the federal government and could also be used to reward or punish providers.
CMS is also interested in the alleged impact of climate change on patients, residents, and consumers, and seeks greater understanding of threats posed by alleged climate-related emergencies. Like the administration’s “equity” agenda, the focus on climate change is a political intrusion into healthcare.
Health Equity
Stratification Methods
- CMS wants to collect a wide variety of personal data from patients in order to create more precise categorizations of patients along race, gender, and other demographic lines.
- CMS wants hospitals to report confidential patient information to highlight potential gaps in care between groups of patients. By labeling these differences as disparities, CMS could use this information to reward or punish certain healthcare facilities.
- The proposed rule would distract medical professionals from providing care to patients and instead saddle them with a new mandate focused on politicized and non-medical issues.
Data Collection
- The Biden Administration wants to use a politicized tool known as the “Social Determinants of Health” (SDOH) for collecting information on racial demographics for each hospital.
- This includes problems related to employment and unemployment, housing and economic circumstances, and social environment, among other non-medical factors.
- CMS will use SDOH data to track the interaction of medical facilities with certain demographic groups. The goal is likely to use this information to influence funding, medical supplies, and possibly even the distribution of medicine and therapies.
Climate Change
- CMS states that climate change disproportionately harms “underserved populations,” such as minority groups, indigenous people, members of religious minorities, people with disabilities, sexual and gender minorities, etc. This is a non-medical assertion.
- Under this rule, healthcare providers will have to shift resources away from patient health and start tracking greenhouse emissions, a task that medical professionals have no competence in.
Comments on the proposed rule must be submitted by June 17, 2022.