Health Care Cost Spike: Biden pushing for trans-surgery mandate

The Biden administration is pushing for more insurers, and thus anyone who buys their insurance, to cover transgender surgeries. Such genital, breast, and facial surgery, as well as hormone therapy and more, would be considered “medically necessary” for those wishing to identify with the other sex.

Discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability is prohibited in federally funded health-care facilities under the Affordable Care Act, passed during the Obama administration. A proposed rule, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on January 5, would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” to that list…

Taxpayers are already paying for transgender procedures, as they are covered by the federal program Medicaid in some states. Some insurers also already cover the procedures…

The rule appears to offer no exclusion for children, Roger Severino, a senior fellow at the EPPC, told The Federalist. It would “put kids on a transgender treadmill and they don’t get off,” Severino said. Children could take puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones only to regret it later when they have damaged their bodies and may find they are infertile, he said…

“It is well known that symptoms of gender dysphoria in children naturally resolve with little to no intervention in 61-98% of cases and that once a child is placed on transition, including through medical intervention, the odds of persistence skyrocket,” the EPPC scholars wrote in their comments on the rule…

The rule opens the back door for requiring insurance coverage for any cosmetic surgery, such as breast or other augmentations. There’s no limit to the number of surgeries someone could have, Severino said…

HHS’s determination that the benefits of the rule outweigh the costs is “arbitrary,” the EPPC scholars note. There’s no way to accurately estimate the cost of the rule, especially as it’s not clear exactly which procedures would be covered or how many people would get them.

The cost of transgender surgeries can range from roughly $5,000 to $100,000, on top of hormone administration costs, voice therapy, and other care, Bloomberg estimates…

The rule does not specify which medical procedures might be covered, but they will likely be the same as those in Colorado’s new plan, approved in October by HHS, Severino said. Colorado became “the first state in the country to explicitly include gender-affirming [sic] care services in its plan,” the Colorado Division of Insurance announced at the time.

Starting in 2023, the state will require individual and small group insurance plans (for employers with less than 100 employees) to cover, at a minimum, transgender surgery such as chest or genital surgery; hormone therapy…

For most rules, a federal agency should give the public at least 60 days for meaningful comment, whereas only 22 days were allowed “to provide input on a complex, major and economically significant proposed rule,” the EPPC scholars complained in their comment on the 145-page rule.

“Twenty-two days is offensive,” said Severino. “All year they’ve been destroying the norm that allows the public to have their say. It creates a rush, which shows that they’re trying to jam things through.”