Of all the things President Donald Trump is doing right, the best is his rollback of racist woke mandates. Case in point: The Trump administration just announced that it’s ditching a discriminatory rule that former President Joe Biden slapped on my private medical practice. The administration announced this in a lawsuit I filed to stop the mandate. Now, my patients and I can breathe a sigh of relief.
I sued the Biden administration in 2023 with the help of the medical advocacy group Do No Harm. The Department of Health and Human Services had just introduced a regulation that pressured doctors like me to develop a so-called “anti-racism plan.” From the moment I heard about it, I knew it was wrong. Anti-racism is just racism in disguise. It’s part of the woke demand that we treat people differently based on the color of their skin. Last I checked, that’s called racial discrimination, and it’s both wrong and illegal under federal law.
I opposed this rule. For one thing, healthcare is already overregulated, and everyone knows it and suffers because of it. Doctors and patients don’t need Washington to make medical care harder to provide and access. But even worse, the Biden administration issued this mandate to “address systemic inequities, including systemic racism.” The implication is that doctors like me are racist, a baseless and insulting claim.
And worst of all, to prove I’m not racist, the Biden administration’s anti-racism form asked me, “What population(s) will you prioritize?” Translation: Doctors should focus on some races over others. That’s blatant racial discrimination. It’s not just backward. It’s evil.
This is why I sued the Biden administration: to protect my practice and my patients from discrimination. I serve a diverse black, brown, and white population in Mississippi. I give all of them equal and excellent care, end of story, no exceptions. The last thing I should do is prioritize people of some races over others. What am I supposed to do, turn away white people at the office door? Put a sign on the window that says “blacks preferred”?
If that sounds awful and absurd, that’s because it is. But that’s what the Biden administration asked me to do: put some patients ahead of others. That’s the opposite of what a doctor is supposed to do. When patients walk in, I have a moral and medical duty to help them. I don’t care what they look like or where they come from. All I care about is giving them the best care.
The Biden administration fought my lawsuit by saying no one was required to develop an anti-racism plan. That’s technically true, but the mandate left no choice. The federal government promised to increase the Medicare reimbursement rate if doctors played along. That’s hard to turn down when you personally run a private practice like mine. Other government mandates have already made it hard to stay open. So do low reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid. Couldn’t I ignore my principles to protect my practice?
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Not a chance. I’m confident the federal courts will strike down the anti-racism rule if necessary. But hopefully it won’t be. In the case I filed, the Trump administration has said it’s no longer enforcing the Biden rule. Not only that, but it said it would move to repeal it altogether. That can’t happen soon enough.
This is a victory for my patients, my medical practice, and the basic American principle of equality. I hope Trump keeps fighting woke racism wherever it exists. It doesn’t belong in medicine or anywhere else.
Dr. Amber Colville is a primary care physician in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She’s a visiting fellow at Do No Harm.