Republicans Launch Midnight Attack on Health Care Access for Trans Americans

After days of infighting over Trump s Big Beautiful Bill the House GOP passed reconciliation measure in the dead of the night with one major giveaway to the far-right Late Wednesday Congressional Republicans amended the bill to prohibit the use of Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care potentially ripping healthcare access away from hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans An earlier version of the ordinance targeted Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for minors In a midnight-hour maneuver Republicans removed the word minors from that provision prohibiting the use of Medicaid funding for gender-transition procedures for children as well as adults The regulation broadly defines gender-transition procedures as everything from surgery to hormone therapy It necessities only a simple majority to pass the Senate Experts on transgender strength care noted that if this provision advances it could make an already-dire landscape for transgender care significantly worse They described devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans who rely on Medicaid that will be further compounded by the roughly billion in cuts to the robustness scheme in the GOP bill Trans folks are more likely to be lower income and subsequently more likely to qualify for Medicaid announced Aspen Ruhlin neighborhood manager at the Mabel Wadsworth Center in Bangor Maine which provides LGBTQ care including gender-affirming hormone therapy as well as abortion care and other vitality care services This would have a devastating impact on folks as they would lose coverage for what is normal and needed healthcare care There s not good coverage to begin with We have seen that in states that have fought to ban gender-affirming care They invariably start with minors and then trojan horse it into banning coverage for or banning access to gender-affirming care generally they commented According to a statement from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law roughly transgender adults are enrolled in Medicaid in the United States Even without the new provision accessing gender-affirming care is incredibly laborious According to the Williams Institute statement transgender adults with Medicaid live in states that expressly deny access to gender-affirming care and transgender Medicaid beneficiaries live in states without laws explicitly protecting coverage There s not good coverage to begin with explained Dr Lakshmi Sundaresan a family medicine physician in Michigan who provides gender-affirming services but not surgery We are often already fighting this uphill battle for coverage Sundaresan argued that GOP lawmakers are trying to pretend as if gender-affirming care is a financial burden on the United States even as they cut basic services for the overwhelming majority of Americans to grant generous tax cuts for the wealthy The impacts of those large scale cuts are going to be felt by the lay residents because they re going to lose coverage or people are going to basically become bankrupt over time if they have prolonged hospitalizations she disclosed Ruhlin commented it s unclear exactly how the bill would be applied in Maine or in other states with similar laws In the state legislature passed a law requiring the state s Medicaid scheme MaineCare to cover gender-affirming care Ruhlin commented it s manageable Maine would still be allowed to use state Medicaid dollars to provide gender-affirming care but it s not a foregone conclusion It also likely means this provision will be subject to lawsuits For Ruhlin the harm caused by these types of restrictions goes deeper than the financial burden it would place on access to gender-affirming care it s also about the message it sends Even trans folks who don t have the same requirements or goals around gender access would still be negatively impacted by this because it s the social impact of reinforcing transphobia in our society they commented The post Republicans Launch Midnight Attack on Vitality Care Access for Trans Americans appeared first on The Intercept