But 'health care is a human right!' UK's NHS has decided that staff can refuse to treat patients who make 'homophobic, sexist, or racist remarks'

Sarah D | 12:47 PM on February 18, 2020

Bernie Sanders and other Medicare for All proponents love to bust out the UK as a shining example of how wonderful and inclusive and universal universal health care can be. Well, here’s what the NHS is up to these days:

Homophobic, sexist and racist patients could be barred from non-emergency care at NHS trusts, under new rules from April https://t.co/lTYHqBmME2

— Sky News (@SkyNews) February 18, 2020

More from Sky News:

Currently, staff can refuse to treat non-critical patients who are verbally aggressive or physically violent towards them.

But these protections will extend to any harassment, bullying or discrimination, including homophobic, sexist or racist remarks.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock wrote to all NHS staff on Tuesday to announce stronger measures to investigate abuse and harassment towards staff, saying “no act of violence or abuse is minor”.

“Being assaulted or abused is not part of the job,” he said.

This is really misleading as it actually addresses physical abuse of nurses, physicians, EMTs, etc. That being said, it also does say they can refuse for hate crimes, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned over the past few years it’s that people think any disagreement is that. https://t.co/4Petsrojic

— not becky (@justanurse25) February 18, 2020

That’s just it. Physical violence is one thing, but a verbal “hate crime” could theoretically be anything that the staff member takes offense to. If a patient who’s been waiting for hours and hours for treatment (because this is the NHS we’re dealing with, after all) lashes out and says something a staff member decides is homophobic, sexist, or racist, that patient can be denied treatment? Seems a little excessive, no? Not to mention highly subjective. What’s so “universal” about that kind of “health care”?