By MEGAN BLOCK | DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION
The Biden-Harris administration opened the door for a massive increase of taxpayer-funded transgender interventions, including child sex-change surgeries, and the Daily Caller News Foundation has obtained enough data to give a partial estimate of the cost.
From January 2018 to September 2023, 16 states spent more than $165 million funding “gender transition services” — including puberty blockers, hormones, and sex-change surgeries — with more than $45 million spent on interventions for children 17 and younger, according to data obtained by the DCNF through a series of public record requests.
The DCNF asked states to provide reimbursement data for gender transition services covered through state insurance and medical assistance programs, such as Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which is funded through Medicaid. The states were able to identify gender transition services through medical billing codes such as International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes. Published by the World Health Organization, ICD codes provide comprehensive diagnostic information for diseases and injuries and create a valuable dataset used in medical research.
The DCNF requested the total amount of reimbursements paid for all gender transition services — which could include speech therapy and mental health services as well as life-altering surgeries — that were covered through state insurance and medical assistance programs.
The states that provided data to the DCNF include: Michigan, Idaho, Illinois, Virginia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington.
Editor’s note: Alaska apparently did not provide data to the DCNF.
The three states with the highest amount of reimbursements for gender transition services for adults and kids were Illinois, Oregon, and Washington state. Illinois spent $40,843,721, which included $14,296,558 in services for children 17 and under. Oregon spent $30,045,262 and Washington State spent $27,145,383. Other statewide totals for gender transition services includes Maryland, which spent $11,849,062, Nevada, which spent $10,096,655, Michigan, which spent $6,821,169, and New Hampshire, which spent $2,360,534, according to data sent to the DCNF.
Virginia provided the DCNF with data from 2020 to 2022, spending a total of $13,933,635 on gender transition services in three years, with $3,480,492 spent on sex-change interventions for children 17 and under.
The state of Oregon specified that their data included reimbursement costs for a range of sex-change procedures including surgeries, anesthesia costs, hair removal, speech therapy, hormone therapy, and puberty suppression.
The data showed a 60% increase in sex-change interventions for adults and kids under the Biden-Harris administration across the 15 states that provided yearly data totals for 2020 to 2022, jumping from $27,753,478 spent on gender transition services in 2020 to $44,553,052 in 2022. Utah did not break down its data into yearly totals and was excluded from this calculation. While data for 2023 was incomplete, 12 states provided some totals showing $22,017,362 had been spent on sex-change interventions over the first nine months of last year.
The DCNF attempted to obtain similar data from 48 states. However, many states outright denied the requests or sought exorbitant fees to obtain public data.
For example, Rhode Island wanted a prepayment of more than $3,000 to fulfill the request that other states considered exempt from public information processing fees.
Explosion In Sex Changes For Minors
Democrat-led policies that required insurers to pay for sex changes for minors led to an increase in the procedures nationwide, according to a leading transgender activist and physician.
In a June 2022 email exclusively obtained by the DCNF, Jason Rafferty, the lead author of the American Academy of Pediatrics sex-change policy, attributed the growth of pediatric sex-change surgery to services being more “accessible” due to increased Medicaid funding.
“I would say that there has likely been an increase in ‘top surgery’ among 16 and 17 year olds simply due to the fact that this surgery has become more accessible. 10 years ago when I started in this field, if a patient wanted surgery there was really only 1 surgeon in the region doing it for patients under 18 and aside from that they would need to travel across the country and pay out of pocket,” wrote Rafferty.
“Clearly if you were on Medicaid or did not have the resources, it was off the table. Today, we have 3 surgeons in [Rhode Island] doing these surgeries and probably half a dozen in [Massachusetts] plus a pediatric plastic surgeon at Boston Childrens specializing in gender surgeries. Most if not all now take Medicaid – very few patients are paying the fully cost of surgery out of pocket. So, the point is that my experience is not that surgery is ‘more popular’ but just more (or simply just) accessible,” he wrote.
Rafferty did not respond to multiple requests for comment from the DCNF.
The rapid growth of tax dollars funding the sex-change industry can be attributed to policies from Democrat presidential administrations.
In 2014, the Obama-Biden administration overturned a rule preventing Medicare from funding sex-change surgeries, opening the doors for taxpayers to pay for sex-change operations. They further expanded coverage for sex-change interventions in 2016 through their interpretation of Section 1557, a non-discrimination provision of the Affordable Care Act.
In May 2016, the Obama-Biden administration issued a rule that quietly redefined the discrimination policy to include sexual orientation and “gender identity,” a move which strong-armed the entire medical community into embracing gender ideology and sex-change interventions, especially for children. “Gender identity” is a term used by transgender activists to describe how a person feels about or perceives their sex. Activists believe these feelings override a person’s biology and should have equal weight in law and society.
The Obama-Biden administration’s regulatory change prevented insurance companies from categorically denying coverage for sex-change interventions, considering such bans a form of discrimination, which forced insurance plans to offer coverage for sex-change services.
“What the rule was about under Obama, and now under Biden-Harris, was to force medical providers to do the surgeries, even against their medical judgments, and for insurance companies to pay for it, which means we all pay for it,” Roger Severino, vice president of domestic policy at the Heritage Foundation and former director of the Office for Civil Rights at Health and Human Services, told the DCNF.
“That includes the whole gamut from hysterectomies to breast augmentations to tracheal shapes, voice training — just an extraordinary number of very expensive procedures to treat a psychological condition using physical interventions, surgeries, etc. and no real religious exemption,” Severino said.
A 2023 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) showed the impact of Obama’s 2016 Rule, finding the number of sex change surgical procedures performed in the U.S. nearly tripled between 2016 to 2019. Roughly 8% of patients were between the ages of 12 to 18, the study found, and showed a sharp rise in breast and chest surgery from 2016 to 2019 within the pediatric population.
Biden-Harris Restores Gender Surgery Funding After Trump Admin
In June 2020, the Trump administration overturned Obama’s Rule on Section 1557, reinstating the government’s previous interpretation of discrimination must be based on biological sex rather than “gender identity.” At that time, Severino was the director of the Office for Civil Rights at Health and Human Services.
On May 10, 2021, however, the Biden-Harris administration reversed the Trump rule and redefined discrimination under Section 1557 to include “gender identity,” again forcing the medical community, including insurance companies, to provide sex-change services to children or face accusations of discrimination.
“I issued the Trump regulations, undoing the Obama Section 1557 changes that added gender identity as a protected class and requiring cross sex, surgeries, hormones, puberty blockers, included on children in federally funded programs and in insurance,” Severino said.
“They were as comprehensive as they could to try to push unscientific gender ideology into the medical system, and they succeeded, over the last three plus years, in trying to coerce hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies to push experimental treatments and surgeries, including and especially on children,” Severino added.
Do No Harm, a medical watchdog group, recently published a databasethat found from 2019 to 2023, 13,994 children in the United States have received sex change-related treatments and 5,747 sex change surgeries had been performed on children.
“Medical professionals must provide evidence-based care, not pursue a political agenda,”Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, told the DCNF. “We are committed to ending this predatory practice, which is harmful to the thousands of minors whose lives and bodies will never be the same.”
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service
This guy I know we can just call him “greg” is all for this mutilation & also thinks it is a child’s right & parents should not be in the decision process!
I am pretty sure he is a harris voter & has the TDS!
There are multiple clinics in Alaska mutilating minors. The state legislature is funding “gender affirming care” with Denali Kidcare $, Dunleavy knows and won’t touch the issue. Kameron Perez on the Anchorage Assembly’s wife is one of the medics preying on children. If you vote for a Democrat, or for Dunleavy, you have blood on your hands.
This.
Thanks for pointing this out.
Kameron Perez comes from a “family” of physicians.
His father was a Indian Health service employee that was involved with some very sketchy practice going on in North slope villages in the 80s – 90s.
I am not sure where he gets his support but people that live in his district get bombarded with calls from Seattle area code phones.
If this makes readers cringe, remember that child mutilation began with abortion-on-demand, all nine months of pregnancy. The next step for the prolife movement would be to not only show ads of aborted children (like presidential candidate Randall Terry did on TV), but show the photos of genital mutilation. The prolife movement warned, decades ago, that the anti-life movement, if not halted, would move into those who are BORN. And always the “soft targets” first: confused children and inexcusably confused parents, the elderly and what Hitler called “Useless Eaters”.
Bob I agree with you on this ridiculous child mutilation. I’m curious if you have any updates for your radio listeners on Dinesh D’Souza admitting he was duped on the voter drop boxes and illegal ballot trafficking? 2,000 mules appears to be total bs! Update please.
What does that have to do with anything even remotely related to this article?
It’s just about impossible to get a call into his show with all his rabid fans.
And, no response to my question.
If the rabid fans are so trying for your patience, why do you continue to come back? Seems like a waste of effort to me.
If there’s somewhere I agree with MAGA, it is that sex change surgeries should never be performed on a minor. An adult? Sure, you get to make your own decisions. But as a minor, not so much.
What about taxpayers and/or insurance paying for it? You OK with that?
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Because, I am absolutely and adamantly opposed to it. Unless you have had extensive therapy, and clearly demonstrated that surgery (or hormones) is the any solution to your mental illness, it is just cosmetic surgery. If the insurance companies will only pay for facelifts, and boob jobs in order to reconstruct after a loss, gender re-assignment should be held to the same standard.
Statistically, about a 1 in 2,000 people have gender dysphoria. Studies also indicate statistically less than 1% (95% confidence) regret the change. We should be discussing how to eliminate the less than 1%, than castigating the 99% who now have bodies matching their gender.
So Frank when you say “eliminate the 1%” what exactly do you mean?
Oh and sorry the remaining 99% now have a body that matches their emotional body image not their actual biological gender. On top of that they are now sterile and dependent on medications for the rest of their lives.
Then here is the next question, assuming that your numbers are actually real, how many of those are children under 18?
So if mom and dad wanted a girl and instead had a boy, then just chop off the penis and buy pink clothes? Pure mental illness has taken our country down the crapper.
Oh my goodness, there’s taxpayer’s money involved! Whudathunk?
Why do we have to pay for non life threatening surgery?
It’s not necessary surgery for life so it should not be a taxpayers responsibility to change sexes for humans.
What amazes me is how this is even a “thing”. How is it that in just a short decade or so gender dysphoria has turned normal? It should have been, especially for minors, listed as mental illness and treated as such from the onset.
Just a quick glance at what the demented old man did to his children is enough to scare the heck out of anybody with children.
Absolutely none of my children’s offspring will ever see the interior of a public school or be in a hospital without immediate supervision at all times.
I doubt anyone will ever be able to clear the rot that has deep roots in all government agencies.
Sadly our government at many levels is way past due for a major flush.
The writer of the article, Megan Block, uses deceptive language. There is no such thing as “sex change surgery.” No one has ever had their sex changed from what was created at conception. Surgical, hormonal, cosmetic or fashionable alterations only create the superficial appearance of an opposite sex phenotype. As to the so called “intersex” category, its just another misleading term for people who are either male or female but born with genetic anomalies or deformities. Genetically defective chromosomes generally result in either a male or female genotype accompanied by sterility. Its time we stop using misleading, irrational, woke language. The word “transgender” itself is a phony oxymoron. There is no such thing.
Another payoff to the medico-tyranny industry using taxpayer money
In my opinion this is another form of pedophilia. The psychological underpinnings are the same. Exert power over a young person, who has no say in what is done to them and can be brainwashed into thinking that this is okay. There is absolutely no remorse that these treatments are destroying a perfectly healthy life, while the victim is not old enough to weigh all the consequences of the “treatment”. It also abuses the natural emotional/hormonal turmoil of adolescents for the gratification and enrichment of the perpetrators.
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