A US judge on Wednesday ruled in favor of Christian employers who refuse, for religious reasons, to provide their employees with health insurance that reimburses drugs to prevent the AIDS virus. Magistrate Reed O’Connor of a Texas federal court, known for making several rulings hostile to former President Barack Obama’s sweeping medical insurance law, on Wednesday tackled a new aspect of this text dubbed “Obamacare”.
The law requires private insurers to reimburse certain preventive treatments and leaves it up to the health authorities to define which ones. These included in 2020 the drugs known as PrEP, tablets which prevent the transmission of HIV and are recommended by the health authorities in particular for gay men.
religious beliefs
Several people and two companies then took legal action to challenge, among other things, the coverage of these drugs, in the name of their religious beliefs. They believe that this “makes them complicit in homosexual behavior”, recalls Judge O’Connor in his decision. One of the plaintiffs incurs a fine of 100 dollars a day in the event of non-compliance with the Obamacare law, continues the magistrate for whom the obligation to reimburse PrEP pills violates the federal law on religious freedoms.
The White House reacted on Wednesday evening by saying that the decision would be “reviewed”. The Biden administration “is dedicated to protecting Americans’ access to free preventative care,” White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre tweeted, stressing the importance of “Obamacare “for such protection.
“Homophobia”
The judgment was also strongly criticized by the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, who declared in a press release that “this disturbing decision is openly homophobic”. The elected official registers the decision in the wake of the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States which, in June, dynamited the right to abortion in the country.
PrEP, for “pre-exposure prophylaxis”, is systematically recommended to men who have sex with men, to heterosexuals who engage in risky behavior, and to people who use syringes to take drugs. While PrEP is 99% effective, only 23% of people who could benefit from it were using it in 2019.