Hospitals Could Lose Federal Funding for Gender‑Affirming Care to Minors

By Audrey Fahlberg | National Review

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will publicly announce on Thursday its new proposed rule banning Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals that provide sex-trait modifications to minors, National Review has learned.

If finalized, the rule — “Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Hospital Condition of Participation: Prohibiting Sex Trait Modifications for Children” — will “effectively end sex-trait modifications for minors nationally,” a senior administration official told NR.

Thursday’s announcement marks the beginning of the process of convening meetings with Health and Human Services officials to flesh out the language and formalize the rule. CMS sits under HHS.

National Review first reported last month that the administration was considering withholding Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding from any hospital that provides gender-transition medical interventions to children, such as puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and in some cases surgery.

This policy change would have dire financial consequences for any health-care facilities that do not change their policies.

“The rule essentially says that a hospital cannot get funding from Medicare or Medicaid for any of their services if they participate in child mutilation,” a senior administration official tells National Review. “In short, the concept is – hospitals cannot participate in Medicare of Medicaid if they provide sex trait modification services to minors, full stop.”

While the rule has not yet been made official, hospitals across the country are already pausing or restricting many of their sex-trait modification medical interventions for minors seeking gender-transition services in response to the Trump administration’s aggressive pushback against the practice.

The list of hospitals that have restricted these medical interventions in some capacity includes Yale New Haven Health, Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Phoenix Children’s Hospital, Stanford Medicine, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Denver Health, UCHealth, Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, University of Chicago Medicine, Rush Medical Center, Mount Sinai, NYU Langone, Penn State Health, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, University of Pennsylvania Health System, Children’s Hospital of Richmond, VCU Health, Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters, Seattle Children’s Hospital, Children’s National Hospital, and Kaiser Permanente.

The recent decision by these medical facilities to curb these programs for minors suggests that many health-care institutions fear criminal investigations and financial penalties under the Trump administration.

And HHS is far from the only department prioritizing this issue. The FBI launched criminal investigations into three pediatric hospitals earlier this year, probing their gender-transition offerings for minors. Also, the Federal Trade Commission held a workshop last month on “Deceptive Trade Practices” related to medical institutions’ sex-trait medical modifications for children.

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