LGBT+ people in the United States already face significant obstacles to obtaining medical care – a 2017 Harvard/NPR/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation study found that 1 in 6 LGBT+ Americans say they’ve experienced discrimination from doctors or at a clinic.
But actions taken by President Trump’s Health & Human Services Administration to roll back healthcare protections for the LGBT+ community could make matters worse, experts say.
Kellan Baker, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health who has worked extensively with HHS, told Politico that the changes mean “it’s only a matter of time before all the gains made under the Obama administration are reversed under the Trump administration, for purposes that have nothing to do with public health and have everything to do with politics.”
HHS has curtailed data collection on LGBT+ people, removed language friendly to LGBT+ customers from paperwork, and established a new religious liberty division headed by a former Heritage Foundation official.