The Trump administration struck another blow against far-left “woke” ideology this month when it eliminated a Biden-era Medicare rule that gave doctors extra money for publishing an “anti-racism” plan. The decision comes as a major relief for patients who want high-quality medical care that hasn’t been corrupted by a liberal political agenda.
Back in 2022, the Biden Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), released a new rule that created an “incentive” structure for doctors to create an “anti-racism” plan for their offices.
Critics blasted the rule as a blatant threat to patient care, as the tenets of “anti-racist” ideology are at odds with medical best practices and scientific fact. For instance, as Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) pointed out in a letter to Biden HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, anti-racist ideology holds that race is “a political and social construct, not a physiological one.”
In reality, of course, race is a concrete physiological fact that influences how doctors treat patients. The heart failure drug BiDil, for example, is far more effective in patients of African ancestry because of genetic differences that are statistically more common in those patients. Patients of Asian ancestry also require lower doses of certain blood thinners than patients of European or African ancestry due to variations in certain genes that affect metabolism.
Proponents of anti-racist ideology also unabashedly promote racism against white people as the solution to racism against non-white people. Ibram X. Kendi, one of the leading voices in the anti-racist movement, has argued that “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination” and “The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.”
Applied to medicine, Kendi’s statement – and the Biden CMS rule – explicitly encourage doctors to discriminate against white patients. It also discourages any critical examination of factors that could be contributing to negative health outcomes for non-white patients.
Instead of focusing on cultural differences and lifestyle choices that could lead to chronic health problems, anti-racist ideology encourages doctors to tell patients that structural racism is to blame for their health issues. Americans struggling with diabetes, obesity, or other problems need factual guidance on nutrition, exercise, and medication that can help them live a healthier life. They do not need to be given an excuse, grounded in left-wing pseudoscience, that the real cause of their problems is “racism.”
The Biden CMS rule was an outgrowth of the former President’s infamous day-one executive order on “advancing racial equity” in the federal government. That order explicitly required every federal government agency and employee to look for ways to incorporate anti-racist ideology in their work.
The money for the CMS incentive program was pulled from a well-intended idea passed in 2015 called the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS). MIPS moved Medicare from a fee-for-service model (getting paid for each visit or test) toward “value-based care” (getting paid for quality and outcomes). It applies to most clinicians who bill Medicare Part B — including physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and clinical nurse specialists.
Eligible medical practices receive a performance score of 1-100 based on certain criteria. Originally, that included things like cancer screening rates, how well clinicians use electronic health records, and expanding patient access through things like after-hours visits and telehealth. The Biden CMS rule added creating an anti-racism plan as one of those metrics.
The rule required that good medicine and science take a back seat to leftist political dogma, asking doctors to “acknowledge systemic racism as a root cause for differences in health outcomes between socially-defined racial groups,” as the Washington Free Beacon previously reported. No longer would things like lowering blood pressure, losing weight, and detecting cancer in its early stages be prioritized. Instead, concepts like “white privilege,” “structural racism,” and “intersectionality” would become the focus of medical practices.
When the Biden administration introduced the rule, the group Do No Harm, which represents “physicians, nurses, medical students, patients, and policymakers focused on keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice,” sued to block it. (AMAC Action has notably worked with Do No Harm on the parental rights front to protect children from radical gender ideology.) As a press release from the organization noted, “CMS’s adoption of the “anti-racism” rule unlawfully exceeded the agency’s permissible authority under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).”
“It encourages doctors to elevate faddish theories about race above patient care,” Do No Harm warned in its initial lawsuit. “It is unlawful, unreasoned, and un-American.”
On November 5, however, the Trump administration removed the anti-racism and racial equity provisions of the rule.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, the founder of Do No Harm and a former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania medical school, applauded the decision and explained its significance. “While masquerading under the misleading ‘anti-racist’ moniker, in practice, these policies injected race-based decision making into the doctor-patient relationship,” Goldfarb stated. “Such racial discrimination has no place in healthcare. By prioritizing evidence-based policies, HHS is working to rebuild public trust in our medical system.”
The Trump administration’s reversal of the Biden-era rule is a reaffirmation of the common-sense idea that the country’s healthcare system should be guided by science and results, not racial identity politics. Americans want doctors who can help them lower their blood pressure, relieve their arthritis, and stay healthy to spend time with their kids and grandkids – not lecture them about why their real issue is not being “anti-racist” enough.
Matt Lamb is an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
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