Donald Trump is blocking two federal health insurance programs that serve low-income Americans from funding gender-affirming healthcare for transgender youth, the administration’s latest effort to deny affirming care to young trans people as part of a government-wide campaign against trans Americans.
The new rule prohibits Medicaid funds from being used to provide care to trans youth under 18, despite recommendations from their own physicians. It also blocks Children’s Health Insurance Program funds from covering care for trans youth under 19.
The rule, which is expected to face legal challenges, specifically bars those programs from supporting pharmaceutical intervention, including hormone treatments, and affirming surgeries, which are exceedingly rare and only under extraordinarily limited circumstances. Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program benefits will still be available to support mental health services for trans youth.
“The federal government is putting up barriers between parents and their ability to make the best medical decisions for their children,” according to Josh Rovenger, legal director of GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders. “That should be chilling to every American.”
With the new rule, the administration is “once again holding vital healthcare funding hostage — pressuring states and providers to fall in line with its political agenda, not sound medicine,” Rovenger said.
open image in galleryAfter a public comment period that received more than 35,000 responses, the president announced the rule change on Truth Social to declare that Medicaid “will NO LONGER fund gender transition surgeries and hormones for minors.”
“We are not going to pay for our innocent children to undergo these barbaric surgeries and practices, which result in unthinkable and irreversible harm to their young bodies,” Trump wrote Tuesday. “Just think about all of the young, innocent, and perhaps confused children who will be spared!”
He then baselessly accused the “Dumocrat Party” of encouraging children to “chop off their reproductive organs before they are old enough to vote.”
In a statement, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the government is “ending federal taxpayer funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children.”
“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,” added Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
“By cutting off federal funds for these sex-rejecting procedures, we’re following the science, saving taxpayer dollars, and, most importantly, protecting children from potentially irreversible harm so they can truly flourish,” he added.
Major medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and the American Counseling Association, among others, agree that affirming care is clinically appropriate for trans youth experiencing gender dysphoria.
“This rule is a dangerous restriction on doctor-prescribed health care,” said Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president of public engagement campaigns at The Trevor Project.
“Personal medical decisions should be made by individual patients, their doctors, and their families — not by a one-size-fits-all mandate from the federal government,” he said.
open image in galleryThe organization’s 2022 peer-reviewed study determined that gender-affirming hormone therapy was significantly related to lower rates of depression, suicidal thoughts, and suicide attempts among trans and nonbinary young people.
One week after his inauguration, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to rescind policies that support or acknowledge gender-affirming healthcare for trans Americans.
He also issued an executive order effectively ending federal recognition of trans people across the government, forming the basis for several other orders focused exclusively on trans people, their healthcare and whether they can serve in the U.S. military or play on women’s sports teams.
Earlier this year, the Federal Trade Commission sued the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, alleging the group made deceptive claims about gender-affirming care for minors and that its members profited off them.
“The Trump administration is terrorizing trans youth and their families with these kinds of actions, and it has to stop,” said Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights group.
Under the new rule, current Medicaid and CHIP patients receiving hormone therapy can continue to receive coverage for up to six more months. The rule appears to be effective immediately for coverage for puberty blockers and surgeries.