Legislative Blog
J.B. Williams, J.D.
Ending Discrimination in COVID-19 Treatment Act
A Blog about Discrimination
A Bit of Background
The following backgrounds help summarize the author's views on both the general topic: Federal and more specifically Discrimination as it relates to that topic.
Brief Summary of Federal
This should be a fairly limited bills area for management the overall structures like highways, military, federal buildings, federal laws, and the like. However it has become the micro manager of all micro managers. They get involved in areas that no federal government should be involved in, and shift more power upward. This has led to each party trying to run over the other party in the eyes of the voters, all the while doing everything possible to maintain their power. They do this by holding onto all of the money, and claiming they know best how it should be spent. But they run debts so badly that no one should be looking to them as an example of anything other than the way to overspend and go further into debt.
Summary of Discrimination
iscrimination in COVID-19 treatment/vaccination status has to stop.
Blog Summary
Discrimination based upon COVID-19 vaccination status or permitting/denying treatment should not be happening.
Ending Discrimination in COVID-19 Treatment Act
Published: 2024-01-18
This bill was referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions; and seems to have just stayed there.
It is meant to ensure that any entity that receives Federal money does not discriminate on any COVID-19 treatment or vaccine. Patient eligibility shall not consider the race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, vaccination status, veteran status, or political ideology of the patient.
To be honest, I would have thought that none of those things could be considered for medical treatments. I understand that should there be a limited amount of available treatments, then a medical facility will be forced to create some kind of list to determine for whom the treatment is provided. For example, if two different people needed a liver transplant (assuming both were of the same blood type, etc), and one of the two individuals liver damage was caused by an accident (perhaps a motor vehicle accident) and the other had been a heavy drinker for many years. Then I could be a transplant team prioritizing the accident victim over the heavy drinker. Of course this presumes all other factors concerning eligibility are equal: their liver transplant is needed as soon as possible, they are both available, etc. Again I understand there needs to be some kind of prioritization of some kind.
However, for some of the treatments the limits of available were we can only treat several thousand. I was honestly shocked when I started reading about people being turned away and that hospitals had priorities for non-white patients being able to have treatments. Now I keep hearing about non-COVID-19 patients being turned away for transplants. Seriously, the vaccine is still only for emergency use and is not for a high-likelihood of death illness. The flu vaccine is not (as far as I could tell) required for a transplant recipient. COVID-19 is a flu or flu-like illness. Requiring the COVID-19 vaccine is nothing short of making a decision based upon political ideology.
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