Please read below for talking points to use when you contact legislators. {.text-center}

TOPLINE FACTS:

• This legislation would allow healthcare providers and insurers to refuse to provide or pay for care that conflicts with their beliefs, even if the care is critically important and in the best interest of the patient.
• This bill would allow any health care provider; hospitals, insurance, clinical or non-clinical staff, even medical students to deny any service based on their religion, morals, or ethics.
• Insurance companies and health plans could refuse to reimburse, pay, or contract for services.
• Religious health care providers or insurers could discriminate against anyone in employment, contracting, or credentialing based on their religious beliefs.
• This bill gives those claiming “medical conscience” to deny services full immunity from liability for any negative consequences of their denial.

EXAMPLES OF PATIENT CONCERNS IN HEALTHCARE REFUSALS:

• A physician’s assistant could override a patient’s directives on end of life care.
• A doctor could refuse to maintain hormone treatments for a transgender patient needing inpatient care at a hospital for an unrelated issue.
• A nurse could refuse to provide a doctor’s prescription for fertility drugs to a single woman or a lesbian.
• Pharmacies could have a policy of refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control, PrEP, PEP, and antiretrovirals.
• Nursing homes could refuse to provide elderly transgender residents with their ongoing hormone treatment.
• An insurance provider could refuse to reimburse a transgender patient for transition-related care, while reimbursing cisgender patients for the same care.