Big Pharma, which profits from the sale of puberty blockers and other gender-bending drugs, is funding an activist group’s index that rewards hospitals for toeing the transgender line.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the nation’s largest LBGT activist group, publishes the Healthcare Equality Index (HEI), a scorecard that “evaluates healthcare facilities’ policies and practices related to the equity and inclusion of their LGBTQ+ patients, visitors and employees.” The index is funded by both Pfizer and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the Big Pharma trade and lobbying association.
According to the Washington Free Beacon:
To earn a perfect score [of 100], hospitals must display LGBT symbols, solicit and use patients’ preferred pronouns, and conduct trainings on LGBT issues approved by the Human Rights Campaign, according to the scoring criteria. They must also provide the same treatments for gender dysphoria that they provide for other medical conditions — meaning a hospital that uses puberty blockers to treat precocious puberty cannot withhold the drugs from children who say they’re transgender. And though the index does not mention medical conscience exemptions explicitly, it does penalize hospitals for allowing “discriminatory treatment that is in conflict with their non-discrimination policy.”
Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., was among those receiving a perfect HEI score last year. (After scoring only 75 in 2020, the hospital boasted of its efforts to reach 100.) Beth Rempe, a former nurse at Children’s National, told the Free Beacon she first noticed her employer going all in on the LGBT agenda in 2019, with doctors sporting transgender-flag pins, nurses asking children for their preferred pronouns, more patients getting puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, and employees being subjected to mandatory gender training. Rempe asked for an exemption from the pronoun mandate but was denied; she resigned in early 2022.
“I was concerned that I would eventually have to administer puberty blockers and hormones, not just use the pronouns,” Rempe said. “I kept finding myself in situations I wasn’t comfortable with ethically.”
Even as European medical bodies retreat from so-called “gender-affirming care,” the HEI encourages — and, to some extent, practically forces — U.S. hospitals to kowtow to radical transgender activists. “The scorecard,” warned the Free Beacon, “has helped powerful lobbyists seed their ideology across American hospitals, becoming de facto regulators of health care.”
“The most coercive part of the index is its ‘Responsible Citizenship’ deduction,” reported the news site. “Hospitals can lose as many as 25 points for any behavior the Human Rights Campaign deems ‘discriminatory,’ an expansive category that includes statements made by hospital doctors and policies that restrict access to gender medicine, including puberty blockers.” Two Texas hospitals were penalized for halting the practice of using puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria while continuing to prescribe them for their intended purpose, treating precocious (early-onset) puberty. A California hospital lost points for refusing to perform a hysterectomy on a transgender man.
HRC’s definition of “discrimination,” writes the Free Beacon, “has already been accepted by courts and government agencies, which have in some cases forced insurers to pay for sex-change operations.”
“A bad score puts a target on hospitals’ backs,” former Equal Employment Opportunity Commission attorney Rachel Morrison told the Free Beacon. “Even if the index itself is not legally enforceable, hospitals still have an incentive to defer to it.”
That is especially true given the current legal uncertainties. “Lawyers will always advise hospitals to take the most legally defensive course of action,” the Manhattan Institute’s Leor Sapir told the conservative website. “In practice, that means deferring to the network of civil rights groups that will sue them.”
Hospitals can also earn HEI points by providing HRC-approved employee training and by supporting “LGBTQ+ equality under the law through taking action on local, state, or federal legislation or regulations.”
They are, however, likely to lose points if they allow their employees to opt out of these radical policies. “If the index is encouraging things people of faith object to, then sooner or later it will encourage hospitals to diminish protections for religious employees,” Justin Butterfield of the religious-liberty group First Liberty Institute told the Free Beacon.
Knowing how dangerous the HEI appears to the majority of Americans, Pfizer and PhRMA both distanced themselves from it in statements to the Daily Caller. But that doesn’t mean they’re going to quit funding it anytime soon. After all, through the HEI, the LGBT lobby gets what it wants with relatively little effort, and Big Pharma rakes in the profits.
