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A new Department of Health and Human Services report charges that hospitals pushed unnecessary gender transitions on vulnerable children because they saw dollar signs.<\/p>\n
At times the behavior crossed the line into fraud, the report says, with children\u2019s hospitals and pediatric gender clinics misusing billing codes to make insurance companies pay for treatments that might otherwise have been rejected as wrong or unnecessary.<\/p>\n
With the report in hand, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referred more than 200 medical entities to the HHS inspector general for a more thorough investigation into wrongdoing.<\/p>\n
Vice President J.D. Vance, meanwhile, has asked the Department of Justice to investigate.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than just pushing these procedures on kids, hospitals and providers may have been defrauding Medicaid and private insurers by using misleading or fraudulent billing codes to get insurance to cover the costs,\u201d said Mr. Vance, who heads the White House\u2019s anti-fraud task force.<\/p>\n
The moves are part of a broad escalation in the Trump administration\u2019s efforts to try to re-cork the bottle on gender transitions involving juveniles.<\/p>\n
Days before the report, Mr. Kennedy finalized a policy blocking federal Medicaid and Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program money from being used to pay for \u201csex-rejecting procedures\u201d \u2014 surgery or medication \u2014 for children.<\/p>\n
The regulation is slated to take effect Oct. 13, though it allows a phaseout of some hormone treatments.<\/p>\n
The HHS report, titled \u201cWolves in White Coats,\u201d says that \u201cfinancial incentives\u201d helped promote the explosion of kids announcing gender transitions and getting medical treatments. Once children start treatment, they become \u201ccaptive patients,\u201d needing continuous care extending into adulthood, the report says.<\/p>\n
Researchers identified nearly $120 million billed for \u201csex-rejecting procedures\u201d since 2019, including tens of millions of dollars that went to puberty blockers but were billed as unspecified endocrine disorders.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe medical establishment and the government failed innocent children. This report exposes how these calculated financial and political efforts left children irreversibly harmed and abandoned at the very moments when they needed real support,\u201d the report concludes.<\/p>\n
The Human Rights Campaign, a leading LGBTQ group, denounced the report as rehashed and repackaged complaints.<\/p>\n