Huh? Law would require HHS Secretary to come up with new gender classifications?

Okay, I’m having a rough week, and it’s only Monday. So maybe I read this wrong.

The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee’s health care legislation will give the Health and Human Services secretary the authority to develop “standards of measuring gender” — as opposed to using the traditional “male” and “female” categories — in a database of all who apply or participate in government-run or government-supported health care plans.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is required by the proposed law — The Affordable Health Choices Act,which was voted out of committee on July 15 — to create a database within one year of the law’s enactment that will include detailed information about those who sign up for government-run or supported health care programs, including their race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, language and disabilities.

The proposed law states that the database can use the Office of Management and Budget “standards for race and ethnicity measures.” 

But for the collection of “gender” data, instead of using the categories “male” and “female,” the legislation calls for “developing standards for the measurement of gender.”

I can almost get past the collection of data on race and ethnicity because different races have different health risks. (With a side note that the government shouldn’t be involved in our health care at all – but that’s a different point.) But what’s the point of developing standards for the measurement of gender, beyond whether one is male or female? Is the government planning to provide sex change operations or drugs to Americans?  If not, why would this language be in a Senate bill? If so, this information should be available to all Americans so they can decide whether they want to foot the bill for surgeries and drugs to change someone’s gender. We’re broke – remember? Will Grandpa be denied his life-prolonging medications to pay for Skippy’s sex change?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 20th, 2009 at 10:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.