What’s the news: The AMA is strongly criticizing a proposed Department of Health and Human Services rule that would do away with Affordable Care Act (ACA) protections for LGBTQ people, women, immigrants, minorities and other patients.

“This proposal marks the rare occasion in which a federal agency seeks to remove civil rights protections,” AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, MD, wrote in a sharply worded letter to HHS Secretary Alex Azar. “It legitimizes unequal treatment of patients by not only providers, health care organizations, and insurers, but also by the government itself—and it will harm patients. Such policy should not be permitted by the U.S. government, let alone proposed by it.”

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.