Senator Schmitt Leads Letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra Regarding Proposed DEI Policies in Healthcare System 

WASHINGTON – This week, Senator Eric Schmitt, along with Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) and Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) sent a letter to Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra regarding the Biden Administration’s attempt to inject woke and divisive DEI into the United States healthcare system: 

“People’s healthcare is the latest place for Biden and Democrats to inject divisive DEI policies. Vital medical procedures like a kidney transplant should not be rated on scale of one to woke and doctors and surgeons should not have to consider the equity of a situation before operating on a patient. DEI has no place in the operating room,” said Senator Eric Schmitt.

BACKGROUND:

• The Increasing Organ Transplant Access (IOTA) model proposed by your Department of Health and Human Services on May 8, 2024, represents the latest in a string of reckless attempts to force “equity” and divisive DEI politics into the United States healthcare system.
• Under the proposed model, released through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hospitals are given payments based on an annual score determined by three factors: number of transplants, organ acceptance rates, and post-transplant outcomes. A successful kidney transplant counts as one point. A transplant given to a “low-income” patient, however, counts as 1.2 points.
• This “health equity adjustment” creates a perverse incentive to prioritize transplants, not by clinical necessity, but by arbitrary income levels. Allocating organs should adhere to the principle of equal treatment for all patients, ensuring that no individual is prioritized over another based on non-medical criteria.

Read the full letter attached.