Senator Scott D. Wiener. (Photo: Kevin Sanders for California Globe)
Bill To Require Doctors Training for Transgender Patients Passes Sen. Health Committee
‘There really doesn’t need to be a state law about this’
By Evan Symon, April 9, 2022 2:40 am
A bill to require doctors to receive training for providing inclusive care for transgender and intersexed Californians passed 8-2 in the Senate Health Committee earlier this week.
Senate Bill 923, authored by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would specifically require a Medi-Cal managed care plan, a PACE organization, a health care service plan, or a health insurer to require all staff and contracted providers to complete evidence based trans-inclusive healthcare training for those identified as transgender, gender non-conforming, and intersex (TGI). Should a complaint be filed and found to be valid, a refresher course we be imposed on the person who had the complaint filed against them.
SB 923 would also set up procedures to ensure that TGI healthcare training is set up, as well as put in sanctions to ensure compliance. Companies and providers would also have to include a list in-network providers who offer and have provided gender-affirming services.
The TGI inclusive care healthcare training system would be set up across the state no later than July 1, 2024.
Senator Wiener wrote the bill both to ensure that TGI Californians will receive adequate healthcare suited to more specialized needs, as well as combat against recent laws in Florida, Texas, and elsewhere. Specifically, SB 923 would be opposite Florida’s Parental Right in Education Bill that bans the teaching of sex education in lower grades, including discussions gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as Texas’ gender affirming care executive order that investigates some cases of transgender children receiving gender affirming care as child abuse.
“What’s happening in Texas and Florida is simply horrifying,” said Senator Wiener earlier this week. “We cannot let gender-affirming care and LGTBQ rights become a politicized issue, with LGTBQ kids caught in the crosshairs. SB 923 will ensure that California providers treat patients with the culturally competent and respectful care that they deserve. This legislation will set a new standard nationwide for what truly inclusive gender-affirming care looks like.”
8-2 passage in Health Committee
In a press release, Senator Wiener specifically cited a study in which 23% of transgender individuals reported that fear of discrimination caused them to postpone or not receive necessary medical care.
Opponents have noted that no lawmaker in California has even proposed such TGI healthcare limiting laws and that a more common sense solution would be adequate for ensuring proper healthcare.
“There really doesn’t need to be a state law about this,” said Ana Martin, a nurse in the Bay Area who often helps treat TGI individuals. “A much more simple solution would be to just include it in regular updates. The medical profession has non-stop updates as better forms of care are developed, new treatments are found, and all sorts of other things.”
“Rather than a statewide bill demanding this, just include it in ways to stay current, and for new doctors, just make it a part of training early on. They made something that could have easily, and quietly, been introduced and instead made it into something political.”
“And hey, doctors and nurses, we don’t care who you are. If you are transgender, we don’t care. We will just do everything in our power to make you well. And if that includes staying current on the needs of TGI people, we’ll do it. Me and other nurses have made the Nightingale Pledge. Doctors took the Hippocratic oath. We’ll treat and care for you no matter who you are.”
Despite opposition, the bill passed 8-2 in the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday. It will be heard next in the Senate Appropriations Committee in the coming weeks. If passed, SB 923 would be the first law of its kind in the US.
Bay Area legislators, such as Sen Scott Weiner and his clones, are stepping up the bombardment. Have you noticed? This one is not only unnecessary, burdensome, and intrusive, but if you ask me is also meant to be a state jobs program for radical “trainers” who shouldn’t be training ANYONE for ANYTHING. These “trainers,” by the way, will likely also be added to the public union rolls. Just what we need, right?
For now, I intend to contact my state reps to oppose all of this stuff. Others may want to monitor and speak up in the committees as well, and more power to you. It’s all very annoying and tiresome, I know, but they must hear from us about this garbage. Find your state senator here:
https://www.senate.ca.gov/senators
…..and find your state assembly rep here:
https://www.assembly.ca.gov/assemblymembers
For a nurse that works with TGI patients Anna Martin is clearly out of touch with the reality of trans experiences with medical care. Perhaps it’s good in the bay area but this state is vast and the assertion that it’s the same state wide is false and ignorant. She states;
“… doctors and nurses, we don’t care who you are. If you are transgender, we don’t care. We will just do everything in our power to make you well. And if that includes staying current on the needs of TGI people, we’ll do it. Me and other nurses have made the Nightingale Pledge. Doctors took the Hippocratic oath. We’ll treat and care for you no matter who you are.”
While this may be true for some, people’s ability to dissociate their personal values and beliefs from their medical work isn’t reality. Doctors and nurses the whole world over, yes even here in California, continue to deny care and access, traumatize and abuse, gatekeep, misinform/misdiagnose, dismiss and devalue their TGI patients on a daily basis. From uneducated staff and medical personnel, to systems and policies that deny even a smidgen of room for lived names/pronouns, all the way to denying medically necessary care because they don’t think someone is ‘trans enough’.
I agree that it shouldn’t HAVE to be a law but the reality of our world and the danger and violence faced by transfolks from all areas of life require it before people might start to actually see and treat trans folks as human and with all the respect and autonomy that entails.
Nurse Anna I implore you to actually have conversations with your TGI patients. You might learn something valuable.
Wondering if you would you be kind enough to tell us what your stake might be in a law that would add unnecessary state workers to the public union job rolls? Thanks.
Do you really think that forced education is the way to handle this type of problem? IMO it will make it worse while a few people profit. Our health system is already broken from politics and $$.
Thanks for the links, ShowandTell.
What a surprise (eye roll) another intrusive bill.
I will contact my state senator.
That’s great, CG. Sent my strong opposition to both reps (for good measure) this a.m. Would love to spend time doing just about anything else! You know, like cleaning the bathroom! But I think the window for introducing all of this legislation is about to close. I think it’s about the same time as Gruesome returns from Central? South? America —- or wherever.
Again – why the laws for the tiny minority of the population???
This is why it’s called San FRANFREAKSHOW….
My corrected headline: “Bill To Require Doctors Training For Not Following Science Passes Sen. Health Committee.”
No kidding!
This is exactly why we packed up and left this den of filth state, so so very glad to be gone!!!
The state micro-managing doctors is as productive as state mandated rent control and anti-eviction is for landlords.
Example #632,893 of why I say most of what’s wrong with California originates from the Bay Area.
The inmates are truly running the asylum.
Over regulation or anti-science agenda to promote transgenderism? Either way it is a waste of taxpayer money. Vote out these idiots.
Wiener is the leader of the CA cabal of child mutilators, child abusers, and pedophiles that thrive on making anti-family, anti-children, and anti-parental control laws become reality. These people should be in prison. And yet, they are voted into office.
Are they voted into office, or are they placed into office by the deep-state Democrat cabal viz voter fraud and rigged voting machines?
^^^ THIS !!!