Texas PrEP Ruling Imperils Free Preventive Healthcare

September 8, 2022 Christianists, Republicans

Axios reports:

A federal court ruling that struck down required coverage of HIV prevention medication may have far more sweeping implications for whether insurers will have to continue offering a range of no-cost preventive health services.

This is not just about PrEP. It’s much broader,” Katie Keith, a health law expert at Georgetown University told Axios. “If we l0se the A or B recommendations, then any employer or plan, religious objection or not, could say we’re not going to cover that anymore.”

Jonathan Adler, a Case Western Reserve University law professor, agrees. The ruling suggests “self-insuring employers could pick and choose what they want to cover based on religious objections to certain types of coverage.”

The New York Times reports:

The ruling also took explicit aim at the H.I.V. drug regimen known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, saying the law’s requirement that it be fully covered violated the religious freedom of a plaintiff in the case, Braidwood Management.

The company’s owner, Dr. Steven F. Hotze [photo above], a well-known Republican donor and doctor from Houston, has previously challenged the Affordable Care Act on other grounds.

The case stems from a lawsuit filed in 2020 by Dr. Hotze and other Christian business owners and employees in Texas; they maintained that the preventive care mandate violates their constitutional right to religious freedom by requiring companies and policyholders to pay for coverage that goes against their faith.

In April 2022, Hotze was charged with two felonies related to a bizarre 2020 “voter fraud search” incident.

Hotze appeared on JMG that year when he left a voice mail for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, telling him to “shoot to kill” Black Lives Matter activists.

You may recall that Steven Hotze has compared gays to “communist termites” eating away at America’s moral fabric. He is also fond of declaring that it’s now a hate crime to denounce homosexuality.

It was Hotze who bankrolled the successful campaign to repeal Houston’s “wicked, evil, Satanic” LGBT rights ordinance, during which he compared gays to rapists and murderers.

According to Hotze, same-sex marriage will result in children “practicing sodomy” in kindergarten.

In 2017, he appeared here when he “prophesied” that God will deliver “just retribution” to lawmakers who vote for LGBT rights.

When he’s not calling on God to kill politicians or for the governor to kill Black Lives Matter activists, Hotze sells “miracle” supplements because high cholesterol doesn’t really cause heart disease.

Hotze regularly quotes QAnon slogans.



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