New York Attorney General Letitia James announced this week that she is leading states in suing the Department of Health and Human Services over actions that would prohibit hospitals from receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding if they engage in transgender surgeries for children.
“[HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] cannot unilaterally change medical standards by posting a document online, and no one should lose access to medically necessary health care because their federal government tried to interfere in decisions that belong in doctors’ offices,” James said in a statement on the matter. “At the core of this so-called declaration are real people: young people who need care, parents trying to support their children, and doctors who are simply following the best medical evidence available.”
The filing asserts that Kennedy and HHS “cannot circumvent statutorily mandated notice and comment requirements by changing substantive legal standards by executive fiat.” It states, “The Kennedy Declaration has immediate, significant, and harmful impacts on the Plaintiff States as administrators of state Medicaid programs and as regulators of the practice of medicine” and “directly harms Plaintiff States’ abilities to administer approved state Medicaid plans in accordance with state laws that protect and guarantee medically necessary gender-affirming care.”
The lawsuit follows Kennedy declaring that “current medical evidence does not support a favorable risk/benefit profile for using these interventions to treat pediatric gender dysphoria.”
“Sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors, and therefore, fail to meet professional recognized standards of health care,” the declaration asserts.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) will release a notice of proposed rules to prevent hospitals from performing transgender procedures on those under the age of 18. “Nearly all U.S. hospitals participate in Medicare and Medicaid and this action is designed to ensure that the U.S. government will not be in business with organizations that intentionally or unintentionally inflict permanent harm on children,” HHS explained in a press release. An additional forthcoming proposed policy will prohibit federal Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding for the procedures.
