You know what I love about living in the US? Freedom! You can choose between multiple overpriced insurance companies to provide you with healthcare, for example. The healthcare companies, in turn, can seemingly charge you whatever they like for their services. If they want to charge you $1,500 (£1,200) for some toenail fungus cream, that is their prerogative. That’s freedom, baby.
As if this wasn’t glorious enough, the healthcare system in Florida has just had a new layer of freedom added to it. On 1 July, a new law goes into effect that means a doctor can look a potential patient up and down, decide they are giving off homosexual vibes and refuse to treat them because interacting with gay people goes against their personal beliefs. The doctor will not face any repercussions for denying care and has no obligation to refer the patient elsewhere.
I wish I was exaggerating but I’m not. Last week, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the Protections of Medical Conscience (pdf) bill, which lets medical professionals and health insurance companies deny patients care based on religious, moral or ethical beliefs. While the new law doesn’t allow care to be withheld because of race, colour sex, or national origin, there are no protections for sexual orientation or gender identity. The only bright spot is that hospitals must still abide by federal laws that require them to stabilise a patient with an emergency condition. In other words, you can’t let a patient die just because they’re wearing a Drag Race T-shirt.
At least, I don’t think you can: it is hard to say precisely what is allowed under this new law because, like a lot of regressive Republican legislation, the bill is deliberately vague. It does not list which procedures are acceptable to refuse and it doesn’t clearly define what constitutes a “sincerely held religious, moral, or ethical belief”. This lack of clarity is by design: Republicans love passing legislation with vague language because it creates confusion and is more difficult to challenge. It is also a lot scarier for the people affected when you don’t have a clear idea what is allowed and what isn’t. The journalist Mary C Curtis has called the tactic “intimidation by obfuscation”. The American Civil Liberties Union noted that the new law means “Floridians will have to fear discriminatory treatment from medical providers every time they meet a new provider, calling into question everyone’s trust in their medical care.”
DeSantis has been a very busy man: in the brief moments he has not spent fighting with Disney, his state’s second-largest employer, he has been signing a flurry of regressive legislation. The day before he signed his bill attacking healthcare equality, he signed a draconian immigration bill that makes life for migrants in Florida very difficult. And, on Monday, he signed a bill that would ban Florida’s colleges and universities from spending state or federal money on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. It also limits how race can be discussed on many courses. In a speech after he signed the bill, DeSantis told prospective college students that if they want to study wacky things such as “gender ideology” they should get the hell out of Florida. “We don’t want to be diverted into a lot of these niche subjects that are heavily politicised; we want to focus on the basics,” said DeSantis. Sounds like a great advert for Florida’s educational institutions, doesn’t it? “Come here if you just want to learn the basics!” I’m not sure what “the basics” are but they clearly don’t include studying Michelangelo or watching animated films since, earlier this year, a Florida principal had to resign after parents were outraged that their kids were shown a picture of Michelangelo’s David and now a Florida teacher is being investigated for showing her class a Disney movie featuring a gay character.
Having banned everything in sight, DeSantis’s next big project appears to be modifying Florida’s “resign-to-run” law so that he can run for president while still serving as governor. It’s not clear when he might finally announce his candidacy, but I will tell you this: it is looking very likely that the Republican nominee for 2024 is going to be either DeSantis, a man who has turned the sunshine state into a hotbed of bigotry, or Donald Trump, a fellow bigot who has been found to be a sexual predator by the law. Please feel free to scream.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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