Hospitals Strike Deal With Trump Administration to Shutter Youth Gender Affirming Care Facilities | Stephen Kruiser, PJ Media
In a major victory for the Trump administration and children, at least six hospitals have signed agreements to pay the government fines and stop providing gender-transition treatments to minors.
Several hospitals also agreed to provide free medical care to children who suffered side effects from hormones and other drugs, as well as free detransitioning care to those who request it.
The agreements follow a wave of gender clinic closings earlier this year after the Trump administration proposed a rule that would have banned funds from Medicare or Medicaid for gender affirming care for children.
"Many hospitals had already suspended the treatments, citing pressure from the administration, writes the New York Times. "But legal experts and transgender advocates said the new deals with hospitals add a sense of finality."
Let's hope so.
"The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT activist group in the U.S., recently issued an “Alert!” saying, “Access to medically necessary healthcare for transgender people is under threat across the country, especially for transgender youth.”
The idea that the transgender care being currently offered at U.S. hospitals and clinics is "medically necessary" is exactly what's at issue in the debate over gender care. In fact, recent research indicates that not only is the kind of gender care being offered by these hospitals not doing the patients any good as far as improving their mental health, but there are also strong indications that they are actually causing harm.
The largest study of transgender youth care was done by the UK in 2024. Known as the "Cass Review," the massive study found little reliable, long-term evidence proving that early medical interventions — like puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones — improve mental health or reduce suicide risk.
Prior to the Cass Review, a smaller study performed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) concluded that the clinical evidence for outcomes such as gender dysphoria, mental health, and quality of life was of "very low certainty." The studies were observational, non-blinded, and lacked control groups, making it difficult to attribute changes directly to the medication. Similarly, the evidence evaluating gender-affirming hormones in adolescents was rated as low-to-very-low quality, with unclear long-term impacts on psychological well-being, bone density, and cardiovascular health.
The Swedish government commissioned a systematic review of medical literature via SBU (the Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services). The review concluded that the evidence for the effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers and hormone treatments in young people is uncertain, and that risks (e.g., potential adverse effects on bone mineral density and long-term health) currently outweigh the documented benefits.
Sweden banned puberty blockers and hormones for minors except in "exceptional circumstances."
Similar studies were performed by Finland and Norway, and the French Academy urged "great medical caution" regarding hormone treatments for youth, noting that "the evidence base supporting early medical intervention is fragile and that long-term side effects remain largely unknown."
Most of the "evidence for "necessary" hormones and puberty blockers is "observational cohort studies" without control groups, making it impossible to separate the effects of hormones from other mental health counseling, social maturation, or placebo effects.
Many long-term studies also suffered from significant participant dropouts, leading to potential follow-up bias. As the Cass Review discovered, and as every other study done on trans youth found, there are high rates of other serious psychiatric conditions (e.g., depression, anxiety, autism) that were rarely controlled for in baseline outcome measurements. In other words, it was impossible to determine if the child's gender dysphoria was due to the condition itself or to other psychological maladies.
It is the United States that remains in the Dark Ages by subjecting children to questionable medical practices. What's worse, the Trump administration says there is evidence the hospitals that signed these agreements may have been overbilling Medicaid and Medicare.
New York Times:
The agreements are a victory for the Trump administration, which has asserted that the potential harms of gender transition for young people outweigh any benefits and that hospitals have overbilled for transition treatments to make a profit. Since early 2025, the administration has applied an array of financial and legal pressures to health care providers to stop treatments in 24 states that permit them.
Many hospitals had already suspended the treatments, citing pressure from the administration. But legal experts and transgender advocates said the new deals with hospitals add a sense of finality.
Since January 2025, major media reports and health tracking organizations indicate that more than two dozen hospitals, major health systems, and specialized clinics have formally shuttered, suspended, or phased out their youth gender-affirming care programs. That's a good start. But the previous three years saw dozens of clinics open, looking to cash in on the trans craze that swept the nation.
There are still a lot of quacks and snake oil salesmen operating in the United States who promise anguished parents, who believe they have nowhere to turn, a "fix" for their disturbed child. In addition to shutting them down, these charlatans belong in jail.
pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2026/…
