The HHS has deemed transgender procedures to be neither safe nor effective as a treatment for children with gender dysphoria.
A coalition of 19 Democrat-led states and the District of Columbia is suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) over proposed measures aimed at preventing federal dollars from being spent on transgender procedures for minors.
The lawsuit was filed on Dec. 23 in Oregon, and it names the HHS, its secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and its inspector general as defendants.
At issue is a pair of proposed rules from the HHS’s Centers for Medicaid and Medicare. The first would prohibit doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for transgender-related treatments for children and adolescents, ranging from puberty-suppressing drugs to cross-sex hormones to surgical procedures such as breast removal.
The second rule would block all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide such treatments to minors. Kennedy has declared that these interventions fail to meet professionally recognized standards of care, deeming them “neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality” for gender dysphoria or related conditions in young people.
“This declaration is a clear directive to providers to follow the science, and the overwhelming body of evidence [that] these procedures hurt, not help, children,” Kennedy said on Dec. 18, when he announced the department’s intention to move forward with the changes.
The proposals are currently undergoing a 60-day public comment period. If finalized, they could have a far-reaching impact across the nation, including in states that have laws in place guaranteeing protection for those providing or seeking such treatments, given that virtually all hospitals rely on Medicare, which covers older adults and people with disabilities.
In their complaint, the suing states contend that Kennedy exceeded his authority by trying to set a “national standard of care.” No statute, they say, allows the secretary to “unilaterally declare” that a category of treatment is “not safe and effective” and thereby exclude it from the Medicare program.
The states also accuse HHS of encroaching on state powers to regulate health care, alleging that Kennedy’s declaration effectively seeks to rewrite state Medicaid plans by threatening to drastically reduce the number of eligible providers and by curtailing their “traditional authority under the Medicaid Act” to determine which providers may participate in their programs.
By Bill Pan
