HB0222

Establishes the Medical Ethics Defense Act, allowing health care professionals, institutions, and payers to refuse participation in or payment for health care services that violate their conscience, with protections against discrimination and licensing penalties.

• Defines key terms including 'conscience' (ethical, moral, or religious beliefs of health care professionals, institutions, or payers), 'health care professional' (broad category including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, students, and support staff), 'health care institution' (hospitals, clinics, nursing homes), 'health care payer' (employers, insurers, managed care entities), and 'health care service' (medical care from testing through surgery). (W.S. 35-34-102)
• Grants health care professionals, institutions, and payers the right to refuse participation in or payment for specific health care services that violate their conscience, while preserving duties to provide other services and emergency medical treatment under federal law. (W.S. 35-34-103(a))
• Permits religious health care organizations that identify as religious in their governing documents and implement religiously-based operating policies to make employment, staffing, contracting, and admitting privilege decisions consistent with their religious beliefs. (W.S. 35-34-103(b))
• Prohibits discrimination by any person or entity, including the state and political subdivisions, against health care professionals, institutions, or payers for exercising conscience rights under the act. (W.S. 35-34-104(a))
• Protects health care professionals and institutions from discrimination for reporting violations of the act to employers, the department of health, or the attorney general, or for participating in related legal proceedings. (W.S. 35-34-104(b))
• Protects health care professionals from discrimination for disclosing information they reasonably believe violates federal or state law, ethical standards of care, or involves gross mismanagement, waste of funds, abuse of authority, or danger to public health. (W.S. 35-34-104(c))
• Prohibits state agencies, political subdivisions, the department of health, and licensing boards from reprimanding, sanctioning, or revoking a health care professional's license based on protected First Amendment speech unless the state demonstrates beyond a reasonable doubt that the speech directly caused physical harm to a patient with whom the professional had a relationship within the preceding three years.