The administration of US President Donald Trump initiated an investigation into hospitals that have provided medications and carried out transgender surgeries in minors, looking for information on processes and results – in particular, “adverse events” – which result from these controversial medical interventions.
Mehmet Oz, director of the Medicare and Medicaid Service Centers (CMS), sent a letter this week to selected hospitals asking if they have changed and how their protocols and procedures have changed in response to the new standards and guidelines issued by Trump and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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Trump signed an executive order on January 29 that instructed the HHS to end the refunds of Medicare and Medicaid for transgender interventions in minors. On May 1, the HHS published a report detailing the lack of evidence that supports such medical treatments.
The CMS gives hospitals 30 days to respond to the letter and declared in a statement which has “urgent concerns” related to procedures that described as “harmful.”
In the letter, Oz asked hospitals what “changes in the guides and protocols of clinical practice” are being implemented in response to the HHS report, particularly around “the adequacy of the protocols of informed consent for children with gender dysphoria”, such as “how it is determined that children are able to make these decisions that have the ability to change life”.
The letter also asked hospitals to report on “any adverse event related to these procedures”, especially with regard to “children who subsequently seek to de-transfection.” He pointed out that the CMS must “guarantee basic quality standards” in the institutions that participate in Medicare and Medicaid.
Some of the medical interventions that concern CMS include surgeries that remove sexual organs or “try to transform a person’s physical appearance to align it with an identity that differs from their sex”, as well as the prescription of cross hormones and medications that “delay the beginning or progression of puberty at its normal time.”
“These are irreversible and high risk procedures that are made in vulnerable children, often with taxpayers’ money,” Oz said in a statement. “Hospitals that accept federal funds are expected to meet rigorous quality standards and maintain the highest level of responsibility in the use of public resources; we will not turn a blind eye to procedures that lack a solid base of evidence and that can result in life -for damage.”
The CMS also requested information on financial data related to such interventions, including invoices for transgender medications and surgeries for minors that were financed with federal money, as well as documents that show the income generated by these procedures and their profit margins.
Mary Rice Hasson, director of the Person and Identity Project at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, told CNA – Ewtn News in English – that the CMS is essentially trying to find out: “What medical interventions have you done in confused children, how much money they are earning with it and how are you going to those children?”
Hasson said that “the gender industry” has falsely said to follow “evidence -based medicine” by providing these interventions, and has “minimized concerns that these hormones and surgeries are in reduced fertility and sterility, sometimes before these children are old enough to buy alcohol.”
“Numerous substantive reviews of evidence, in addition to the recent general review of HHS, have found the opposite: that there is very little evidence of benefit, most of the evidence is of low quality and children are suffering permanent damage, including infertility/sterilization, cardiovascular risks, weakened bones and probable changes in the brain,” he said.
Hasson expressed skepticism that many of the hospitals can fully meet, stating that they have “done a terrible job monitoring how children are doing”, and that the protocols for informed consent “exaggerate the alleged benefits and minimize the damage.” He also said that hospitals “do not want to reveal how much money they are earning, because that exposes their mercenary motifs.”
“It is likely that these hospitals hire armies of expensive lawyers to help them avoid accountability, but I don’t think this administration went back,” Hasson added.
Translated and adapted by the ACI Press team. Originally published in CNA.
Tyler Arnold
Tyler Arnold is a reporter of the National Catholic Register. He previously worked at The Center Square and has published in various media, including The Associated Press, National Review, The American Conservative and The Federalist.