HHS terminates Biden-era rule that rewarded doctors for ‘anti-racism’ plans

By Tate Miller
The Center Square

In a win for a return to meritorious health care systems and patient trust in them, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services terminated a Biden-era regulation that rewarded doctors who implemented an “anti-racism” plan.

Medical director at Do No Harm Dr. Kurt Miceli told The Center Square: “This is an essential step towards restoring the public’s trust in our once-esteemed medical institutions.

“By removing this rule, HHS has signaled its commitment to eliminating identity politics from health care,” Miceli said.

Do No Harm is a group of medical professionals dedicated to keeping identity politics out of medicine and was a part of filing a lawsuit against the rule.

The regulation in question “offered higher federal payments for physicians who implement an ‘anti-racism’ plan,” a Do No Harm press release stated.

“Aimed at treating broad societal disparities regardless of their cause, the ‘anti-racism’ rule encouraged doctors to use race as a primary factor in care over individualized medical treatment,” the press release said.

Miceli told The Center Square that “medicine must remain rooted in the principle of treating each patient as a unique individual, guided by their specific circumstances, not by group identity.”

“When evidence, merit, and expertise guide decision-making, skilled medical professionals are empowered to provide the highest quality care to their patients,” Miceli said.

In 2022, Do No Harm “took issue with the rule” and filed a lawsuit along with a number of states against the Biden administration’s HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-Lasure, the release said.

Do No Harm’s visiting fellow Dr. Amber Colville and the states of Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and Montana are those who brought the case against Biden’s HHS leaders.

“Specifically, the lawsuit argued that CMS’s adoption of the ‘anti-racism’ rule unlawfully exceeded the agency’s permissible authority under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA),” the release said.

“Following the Trump administration’s reconsideration of its position in the case, CMS removed the challenged racial equity provisions in a new final rule published on November 5, 2025,” the release said.

In light of this new rule from President Donald Trump’s CMS, Do No Harm’s lawsuit “is expected to be voluntarily concluded in the coming weeks,” the release said.

HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

Do No Harm’s chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb said in the release that “Do No Harm applauds HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy and CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz for undoing the unscientific and discriminatory Biden-era rule.”

“While masquerading under the misleading ‘anti-racist’ moniker, in practice, these policies injected race-based decision making into the doctor-patient relationship,” Goldfarb said.

“Such racial discrimination has no place in healthcare,” Goldfarb said. “By prioritizing evidence-based policies, HHS is working to rebuild public trust in our medical system.”

In late October of this year, Do No Harm filed a federal civil rights complaint against a healthcare system in Texas for using “racially discriminatory criteria” when selecting its vendors, such as that a vendor must be minority- or women-owned, The Center Square previously reported.