The Trump administration announced Tuesday that it is banning Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding from being used for “sex-rejecting” drugs and surgeries for children.
“Today, we are ending federal taxpayer funding for sex-rejecting procedures on children,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said in a statement.
“These interventions carry serious risks and can cause irreversible harm. The federal government will no longer use Medicaid and CHIP dollars to fund procedures that fail to meet the evidentiary standard our children deserve,” he continued.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said it is implementing the final rule “consistent with its commitment to protect children from experimental and life-altering sex-rejecting procedures that carry serious long-term health risks and lack sufficiently reliable evidence of clinical benefit.” The agency said the funding ban applies to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical interventions for minors, which “can result in irreversible damage, including infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other lasting physiological effects.”
“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement. “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.”
Hellbound and Down 