Ohio governor signs budget that includes allowing medical providers to deny services to LGBT

[moriah]

57. No, but by giving payers (aka insurance companies/self-insured businesses)...

.... the same ability to have a "conscience" as an individual medical practitioner (who have almost always had some kind of conscience exemption for participation in medical procedures that go against their conscience)...

Then it could very easily, for example, lead to insurers denying single men or men married to other men coverage for PrEP regimens -- even if their doctor thinks it is the best thing for their health. Some might say the only situation their conscience could allow PrEP to be covered would be for married heterosexual sero-discordant couples of reproductive age, so they can continue to have sex without condoms and "replenish the earth".

While I think a doctor who won't give a life-saving medication to someone because they think the patient should live according to the doc's own morals and if they did they wouldn't need said life-saving medication should really hang up their stethoscope, we've recognized the right of Catholic surgeons/hospitals to refuse to do sterilization procedures.

I truly do not think a self-insured company (as the "payer" under this law) should get to dictate whether or not it will cover procedures/meds that don't violate a provider or hospital's conscience -- and in fact are recommended by that doctor in the course of a doctor-patient relationship as medically necessary.