Live by the federal subsidy … well, you know the rest. And if not, Robert Kennedy Jr just served up a big reminder.
Republicans in Congress got thwarted in their attempt to defund providers delivering pediatric sex-chsange therapies. Instead, the HHS Secretary will act within his authority to deny Medicare and Medicaid funds to hospitals and clinics that provide these services, forcing them into a choice between fundig for actual care and pandering to the extreme Left at the expense of children. National Review got the scoop:
The Department of Health and Human Services will soon begin the rule-making process to prohibit the federal government from directly funding sex-trait modifications for minors through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), National Review has learned.
The White House is in “the final stage of review for a new rule that would make it a condition of hospitals participating in Medicare or Medicaid that they not provide sex trait modifications to minors,” according to an administration official. The prohibition will apply to hospitals that provide puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender-transition surgeries to minors.
The groundbreaking decision by the White House to use the power of the executive to ban federally funded gender-transition services for minors follows an unsuccessful attempt by congressional Republicans to ban federal funding for such practices through the budget reconciliation process. The Senate parliamentarian ruled that the legislative language included in the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” did not clear the Byrd rule, prompting GOP lawmakers to spike the language from the final bill that passed earlier this month.
There is more than one way to defur the feline. Especially the federal feline.
How do we know this will happen? Using the rules process practically ensures it. Most administrations make the mistake of skipping over these steps in haste to make their point, but courts take the Administrative Procedure Act very seriously. An executive order does not overcome the APA in matters such as these. The use of the rulemaking process will slow this down, but it will also ensure that the changes will be legally bulletproof, or as bulletproof as activist district courts allow them to be.
Congress could get into the act here in either direction — by creating a statute that either implements this rule or one that undoes it. At the moment, though, neither would pass. Republicans control both chambers, but only barely, and such a bill would be subject to filibuster. (That’s why the GOP tried to keep it attached to the reconciliation bill.) Democrats would block it in the Senate even if a bill stripping providers of CMS eligibility while providing pediatric sex change therapies made it out of the House. And it’s highly unlikely that a Democrat bill reversing the rule-to-be would even get a floor vote in either chamber.
That’s not the end of the matter, however. National Review goes on to report that HHS and potentially the Departmet of Justice are preparing investigations into pediatric sex-change providers, on the basis of potential billing fraud:
The White House is also signaling an eagerness to investigate Medicaid and Medicare fraud related to child-transition care. According to the senior administration official, HHS and other relevant departments are also “reviewing specific instances of questionable billing for sex trait modifications, particularly in states which have already prohibited these procedures for minors — if a credible allegation of fraud is found, Medicaid funding can be cut off quickly and entirely.”
Health care provider testimony suggests this phenomenon is common. In April, for example, general surgeon Eithan Haim testified before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government about how some hospitals use deceptive billing codes to fraudulently disguise gender-transition surgeries as other procedures.
That won’t have to wait for the six-month cycle of a rule change. If providers are defrauding Medicare and Medicaid to get paid directly for pediatric sex-change therapies, their CMS funding can stop immediately. HHS has the authority to enforce its rules by suspending or excluding providers engaged in fraud from federal repayments, and the DoJ can and often does take up those cases on a criminal basis as well.
The best part of this will be the rethinking it will require. The UK has already cut its support for pediatric sex-change therapies after the Cass Review determined that puberty blockers did nothing to address pediatric gender dysphoria while essentially sterilizing children. Another major study on the issue here in the US got suppressed last year for allegedly coming to the same conclusion. Both HHS and the DoJ are already investigating several cases of detransitioners who claim now to have gotten pressured into life-changing surgeries and therapies by providers who also receive CMS funding.
HHS sent a warning signal in May over the lack of sound scientific or medical evidence for pediatric sex-change therapies. This is just the next shoe dropping on radicalized providers pushing fad medicine and maiming children for virtue signaling. It won’t be the last.
