According to data obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation, the Biden-Harris administration has enabled a substantial increase in taxpayer-funded gender transition procedures, including minor surgeries. Over $165 million was spent on these services in 16 states between 2018 and 2023, with $45 million going to juveniles under the age of 18. Federal regulations requiring public insurance plans to cover gender transition procedures are responsible for this increase.
- States including Illinois, Oregon, and Washington led in spending on gender transition services, with Illinois allocating $14 million to services for minors.
- Federal policy changes under Obama-Biden and Biden-Harris administrations have expanded Medicaid and CHIP coverage for gender transition procedures, making such services more accessible.
- A 2023 study revealed a nearly threefold increase in sex-change surgeries from 2016 to 2019, with 8% of patients aged 12 to 18.
- Critics argue the policies force insurers and medical providers to offer controversial procedures while ignoring ethical and scientific concerns.
- Organizations like Do No Harm have raised alarms about the long-term impacts on minors, citing nearly 6,000 pediatric sex-change surgeries from 2019 to 2023.
EXCLUSIVE: Biden-Harris Admin Opened Floodgates For Taxpayer-Funded Sex Changes On Kids
The Daily Caller News Foundation has gathered enough information to provide a rough cost estimate for the significant increase in taxpayer-funded transgender interventions, including juvenile sex-change procedures, made possible under the Biden-Harris administration.
According to data gathered by the DCNF through a series of public record requests, 16 states spent more than $165 million between January 2018 and September 2023 on gender transition services, such as hormones, sex-change surgeries, and puberty blockers, while more than $45 million was spent on interventions for children aged 17 and under.
The DCNF requested that states provide reimbursement information for gender transition procedures that are covered by Medicaid-funded Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and other state insurance and medical assistance programs. Medical billing codes, such as International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes, allowed the states to identify gender change services. ICD codes, which are published by the World Health Organization, offer thorough diagnostic data for illnesses and injuries and contribute to a useful dataset for medical research.
In addition to life-altering surgeries that were funded by state insurance and medical assistance programs, the DCNF asked for the total amount of reimbursements paid for all gender transition services, which may include speech therapy and mental health services.
Michigan, Idaho, Illinois, Virginia, Nevada, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Maryland, New Hampshire, Wyoming, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Utah, and Washington are among the states that sent data to the DCNF.
Illinois, Oregon, and Washington were the three states that reimbursed the most for gender transition services for adults and children.Illinois spent $40,843,721, of which $14,296,558 was allocated to services for children under the age of 17.Washington State spent $27,145,383, while Oregon spent $30,045,262. According to data supplied to the DCNF, other statewide totals for gender transition services include Maryland ($11,849,062), Nevada ($10,096,655), Michigan ($6,821,169), and New Hampshire ($2,360,534).
Data from 2020–2022 was given to the DCNF by Virginia, which spent $13,933,635 on gender transition services over three years, including $3,480,492 on sex-change therapies for youth aged 17 and under.
According to the state of Oregon, their data included reimbursement expenses for a variety of sex-change operations, such as hormone therapy, speech therapy, hair removal, anesthesia, surgeries, and puberty suppression.
In the 15 states that submitted annual data totals for 2020–2022, the data revealed a 60% rise in sex-change interventions for adults and children under the Biden-Harris administration. The amount spent on gender transition services increased from $27,753,478 in 2020 to $44,553,052 in 2022. Utah was not included in this computation since it did not separate its data into annual totals. Although there was insufficient data for 2023, 12 states submitted totals that indicated $22,017,362 had been spent on sex-change initiatives during the first nine months of the previous year.
The DCNF made an effort to collect comparable data from 48 states. Many governments, however, either flatly rejected the requests or demanded outrageous fees in order to access public data.For instance, in order to comply with the request that other states deemed exempt from public information processing fees, Rhode Island sought a prepayment of over $3,000.
Explosion In Sex Changes For Minors
According to a prominent transgender activist and doctor, the number of sex changes performed worldwide increased as a result of Democratic-led regulations that mandated insurance companies to cover the cost of the procedures for adolescents.
Jason Rafferty, the principal author of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ sex-change policy, claimed in an email acquired exclusively by the DCNF in June 2022 that the rise in juvenile sex-change surgery was due to easier access to treatments brought about by greater Medicaid funding.
Simply because this surgery has become more available, I would argue that there has probably been a rise in top surgery among 16 and 17-year-olds. When I first started working in this profession ten years ago, there was only one surgeon in the area who performed surgery on patients younger than eighteen, and in addition to that, they had to go across the nation and pay out of pocket, Rafferty stated.
It was obviously off the table if you were on Medicaid or lacked the necessary funds. In addition to a pediatric plastic surgeon at Boston Children’s who specializes in gender operations, we currently have three physicians performing these procedures in [Rhode Island] and perhaps six in [Massachusetts]. Few patients are paying the entire cost of surgery out of pocket these days, as the majority, if not all, accept Medicaid. The key, he noted, is not that surgery is more common, but rather that it is more (or just plain) accessible.
The DCNF made several requests for comment, but Rafferty did not reply.
Democratic presidential administration policies are responsible for the sex-change industry’s explosive growth in tax revenue.
The Obama-Biden administration made it possible for taxpayers to pay for sex-change procedures in 2014 by overturning a rule that prohibited Medicare from paying for such procedures. In 2016, they significantly broadened coverage for sex-change procedures by interpreting the Affordable Care Act’s non-discrimination clause, Section 1557.
The whole medical establishment was coerced into adopting gender ideology and sex-change procedures, particularly for minors, by the Obama-Biden administration’s order that surreptitiously rewrote the discriminatory policy to cover sexual orientation and gender identity in May 2016. Transgender activists refer to a person’s feelings or perceptions of their sex as their gender identity. According to activists, these emotions should be given equal weight in society and the law because they transcend a person’s biology.
Insurance plans were compelled to provide coverage for sex-change services when the Obama-Biden administration’s regulation shift stopped insurance companies from outright refusing coverage for sex-change interventions, viewing such prohibitions as discriminatory.
According to 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, the rule under Obama and now under Biden-Harris was about forcing doctors to perform the surgeries, even against their medical advice, and having insurance companies pay for it, so we all pay for it, he told the DCNF.
“There is no real religious exemption,” Severino added, “and that covers the entire spectrum from hysterectomies to breast augmentations to tracheal shapes, voice training, and just an extraordinary number of very expensive procedures to treat a psychological condition using physical interventions, surgeries, etc.”
The impact of Obama’s 2016 Rule was demonstrated by a 2023 study that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It found that between 2016 and 2019, the number of sex change surgery procedures performed in the United States virtually tripled. The study discovered that approximately 8% of patients were between the ages of 12 and 18, and that the number of young patients undergoing breast and chest surgery increased sharply between 2016 and 2019.
Biden-Harris Restores Gender Surgery Funding After Trump Admin
Obama’s Rule on Section 1557 was overturned by the Trump administration in June 2020, reverting to the government’s earlier definition of discrimination, which required that it be based on biological sex rather than gender identity. Severino was then the head of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights.
The Biden-Harris administration, however, overturned the Trump rule on May 10, 2021, and expanded the definition of discrimination under Section 1557 to include gender identity. This once more compelled the medical community, including insurance companies, to offer sex-change services to children or risk being accused of discrimination.
I issued the Trump regulations, reversing the Obama Section 1557 revisions that made gender identity a protected class and mandated that minors in federally supported programs and insurance have cross-sex, surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers, according to Severino.
Over the past three plus years, they have been successful in trying to pressure hospitals, physicians, and insurance companies to promote experimental treatments and surgeries, particularly on children, Severino continued. They were as thorough as they could be in their attempts to introduce unscientific gender ideology into the medical system.
According to a database recently released by the medical watchdog group Do No Harm, 5,747 sex change procedures and 13,994 sex change-related treatments were administered to minors in the US between 2019 and 2023.
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of Do No Harm, told the DCNF that doctors should not follow a political agenda but rather give evidence-based care. For the thousands of children whose lives and bodies will never be the same, we are dedicated to putting an end to this criminal practice.
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