“It seems on its face an effort to exert political control over the VA medical staff.”

Arthur Caplan, founding head of the division of medical ethics at New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine. He was referring to new rules from the Department of Veterans Affairs that would allow medical staff to decline to treat patients based on their personal characteristics, such as being Democrats or unmarried. Federally protected classes such as race and religion remain sacrosanct but other groups are not, with explicit redaction of protection based on politics or marital status. (The Guardian)