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Robyn Stevens Brody\/Sipa USA\/AP<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since President Donald<\/span> Trump returned to the White House, he\u2019s been vowing to stamp out<\/a> gender-affirming medical care\u2014what his administration terms \u201csex-rejecting procedures\u201d\u2014for young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Now, his administration is specifically going after the health care of trans kids from low-income families. On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released a final rule<\/a> forbidding Medicaid and the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program from paying for puberty blockers and hormone therapy to treat gender dysphoria, as well as the surgeries provided in rare cases<\/a> to older teens.<\/p>\n The Medicaid part of the rule applies to patients under age 18, while the CHIP provision applies to patients under 19. The rule will take effect in October, with one exception: For patients already on cross-sex hormones, coverage for those medications will continue for an additional six months to allow for a \u201climited tapering period,\u201d according to the final rule.<\/p>\n A second rule\u2014the so-called \u201cnuclear weapon\u201d<\/a> designed to force hospitals nationwide to stop providing gender-affirming care for trans kids, or lose all<\/em> Medicaid and Medicare funding for all<\/em> their patients\u2014is now scheduled to be finalized by December<\/a>.<\/p>\n Gender-affirming medical treatments for minors remain supported by virtually all leading US medical associations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Gender-affirming medical treatments for minors remain supported by virtually all leading US medical associations. But the Trump administration, no stranger to \u201calternative facts,\u201d commissioned its own report criticizing trans youth healthcare last year\u2014a project spearheaded<\/a> by conservative activist Leor Sapir and authored by outspoken critics of gender-affirming care for minors. Their report, published by the Department of Health and Human Services, \u201cmisrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care,\u201d American Academy of Pediatrics president Susan Kressly said at the time. Yet the final Medicaid and CHIP rule issued Tuesday heavily cites the Sapir team\u2019s report as evidence for why the new restrictions on coverage are justified.<\/p>\n In announcing the rule, CMS administrator Mehmet Oz denied the demonstrated<\/a> benefits<\/a> of gender-affirming care for trans kids\u2019 mental health. <\/strong>\u201cChildren deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,\u201d\u00a0Oz told Fox News in an exclusive<\/a> on Tuesday announcing the final rule. \u201cBy cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we\u2019re following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe know what this is\u2014a dangerous and unnecessary attempt to prevent transgender and nonbinary young people from accessing the best-practice health care they need to lead healthy and happy lives,\u201d said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, of the LGBTQ youth suicide-prevention group the Trevor Project, in a statement on Tuesday. \u201cThe Trevor Project\u2019s research<\/a> shows that access to this care is associated with significantly lower rates of depression and suicide risk among transgender and nonbinary young people who receive it.\u201d<\/p>\n Twenty-six states have outlawed gender-affirming treatments for minors<\/a> since 2022, in response to a coordinated campaign<\/a> by religious-right and anti-LGBTQ activists. Since Trump returned to office and started threatening providers of transgender healthcare with defunding and prosecution, dozens of hospitals in both Democratic and Republican-led states have preemptively ended gender-affirming treatments to minors. Since then, families of young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria have been forced to travel long distances\u2014or uproot their lives entirely<\/a>\u2014to get their kids to providers still offering treatment. As a result, the attacks on trans youth healthcare already hit poorer families the hardest.<\/p>\n Nearly 35,000 public comment<\/a>s were received on the new Medicaid and CHIP rule, with over 90 percent of commenters opposing it. As I reported in April<\/a>, many of them were the parents of transgender children, who pleaded with the government to not proceed:<\/p>\n For a teenager struggling with gender dysphoria, a break in treatment could mean their body proceeds with the puberty of their birth sex, with potentially severe mental health consequences. Blair\u2019s mom worried about her son losing not just his medication, but also the counseling, regular blood tests, and side-effect monitoring he received from his team at the MetroHealth clinic. So after taking some time to think, she wrote a comment on Regulations.gov, beseeching the government to stay out of her family\u2019s personal business.<\/p>\n \u201cI have learned that my original vision of what my child\u2019s life would look like is very different from reality\u2014and yet, this version is just as beautiful, if not more so,\u201d she wrote. \u201cThat is why I find it so hard to understand why the government would try to interfere in such personal and medically complex matters.\u201d <\/p>\n She\u2019s not the only parent pleading with the Department of Health and Human Services not to cut off their child\u2019s treatment. \u201cEvery decision I have made as a parent is to keep my kid healthy and safe,\u201d wrote one of the 30,000-some\u00a0public commenters<\/a>\u00a0on the proposed regulation. \u201cIn an emerging culture where parents\u2019 choice is so important to school and child development policies, why is my choice to consult with my child\u2019s medical team and make informed decisions being taken away and infringed on?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n LGBTQ rights organizations have said they intend to take the issue to the courts. \u201cThe rule announced today will face legal challenge,\u201d GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders announced in a statement Tuesday after the final rule was released.<\/p>\n \u201cDespite this being called a \u2018final rule,\u2019 we have time to fight back,\u201d Heng-Lehtinen added. \u201cNothing will change overnight\u2014and this rule would not ban this care nationally, nor would it ban hospitals from providing these services. We will continue working closely with our partners and allies across the country to stop this dangerous rule, and to create a country where all young people can receive the best-practice health care they need.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n
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