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US hospitals and clinics have billed out nearly $120 million in gender-related medical treatments to minors since 2019, putting thousands of children on an expensive and irreversible treadmill requiring lifelong upkeep — with the blessing of doctors and lefty politicians.
The bombshell report from President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services also claims insurance fraud is rampant, with evidence suggesting pediatric gender clinics and children’s hospitals are creatively cooking the books to get young patients treatment.
Those with the highest billings — which encompassed more than 5,500 surgical procedures and 8,500 courses of hormone treatments — were some of the largest children’s hospitals in the country, including Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and Boston Children’s Hospital, HHS found.
The unsettling findings have prompted the Trump administration to launch a criminal investigation.
The ‘madness’ that’s been allowed fester — despite Trump’s best efforts
The 64-page report, titled “Wolves in White Coats,” documents what the agency calls irreparable “harm to America’s youth” inflicted over the last decade or so by healthcare providers and hospital systems, who have allegedly lined their pockets by promoting costly procedures and treatments for gender-confused minors.
“The policies of President Donald J. Trump have discouraged hospitals from providing these interventions. But how was this madness allowed to fester under America’s hospital system?” the report asks in the introduction.
“This report concludes that a litany of political and financial incentives led providers to offer, and indeed urge, the prescription of sex-rejection drugs and surgeries for minors.”
HHS points to “financial incentives” as one potential explanation for the explosion in gender-related care for minors — as hospitals sought a way to juice profits in pediatric departments, which typically bring in lower margins than other specialties.
“Gender clinics changed that calculus by introducing a novel source of revenue: they promised a new stream of continuous revenue for pediatrics, endocrinology, and surgical specialties by taking physiologically healthy young people — who otherwise would not need to seek medical attention, and rendering them dependent for life on the medical system.”
The report cited watchdog analyses that have found hospitals and clinics have billed almost $120 million in gender care treatments since 2019 — involving 5,500 surgical procedures and 8,500 courses of hormones or blockers.
HHS accuses health care providers of willfully misusing diagnostic codes — diagnosing patients with endocrine disorder or precocious puberty — to get insurance to foot the bill or to protect a patient’s privacy.
Sky-high health care costs for the healthiest population
Youths being typically healthier than the general public and requiring less and less frequent medical care means fewer organic opportunities to provide pricier treatments — unless you manufacture them.
Citing claims data from a comprehensive 2022 report spanning nearly three decades, HHS writes that annual healthcare spend for a child under 18 averaged around $3,000, far less than a lifetime of hormone treatments or a single operation.
According to HHS, hormone therapy costs between $545 per year for androgens and $735 for estrogen — and a whopping $16,385 for the far more expensive “puberty blocker” hormone GnRH.
“Lifetime totals for a patient starting as a minor can reach $25,000-$75,000 even without surgeries,” HHS writes, citing figures from transgender advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
“When surgeries are included, individual lifetime spending on surgical interventions can easily exceed $100,000 and approach $170,000.”
Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and Boston Children’s Hospital billed $8.2 million and $6.5 million, respectively, for gender-related care between 2019 and 2023.
HHS notes these sky-high price tags exclude ancillary treatments like banking egg or sperm cells, voice therapy, hair removal and more.
“In an era of razor-thin pediatric margins and pressure on hospital reimbursements, this new patient cohort—young, insured or Medicaid-eligible, and requiring perpetual follow-ups—represented a strategic area of growth,” the report notes.
“Endocrinology and surgery departments gained volume and prestige, while hospital administrators gained a reliable revenue line that helps subsidize lower-margin services.”
The process for reversing many of these treatments, particularly those undertaken before or during puberty, serves to “further embed the patient in the medical system,” subjecting patients to still more expensive treatments, according to the report.
Taking advantage of young people
Some patients who have medically transitioned later seek to “detransition,” HHS writes.
Thursday’s report shares the stories of several “detransitioners” who stopped or tried to reverse treatments they started during adolescence.
Disturbingly, many of their stories play out the same way, starting with a traumatized or confused adolescent discovering transgenderism on the internet and seeing it as a potential escape from their existential angst.
Next, adults they trust, including some combination of school counselors, psychologists and physicians, fast-track them toward transgender surgeries or hormone therapy.
Then they wind up experiencing horrific complications, but their doctors never even connect the dots much less offer any guidance if they formally stop the treatments.
Finally, they’re putting their lives back together today, many of them struggling with the after-effects of the procedures they endured.
Vance demands a criminal probe
In tandem with the report’s release, the Trump administration announced it was launching a criminal investigation into whether providers named in the report committed fraud or violated any other federal law.
“This Administration will not stand idly by while some in the medical community harm our children in search of profit, Vice President JD Vance wrote on X Thursday afternoon, a letter he penned to Attorney General Todd Blanche.
“That is why today I am referring this matter to the Department of Justice to launch a federal criminal investigation. We will stop this fraud and restore trust in public health,” he vowed.
The second Trump administration’s approach to gender ideology has stood in stark contrast with the previous administration, which was “committed to advancing transgender equality … everywhere,” including in “our … healthcare systems,” as former President Joe Biden said.
According to HHS, the Biden administration also weaponized Section 1557 in the Affordable Care Act — which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity, applying it to healthcare professionals who refuse to provide gender treatments, or even punish insurance companies for refusing to cover them.
“Sex discrimination allegations opened the door to investigation and enforcement actions by HHS,” the report notes.
HHS writes that evidence indicates health providers may be committing fraud in several different ways, including inflated billings, deliberate misdiagnosing or misusing medical coding to defraud private insurance carriers and government programs including Medicaid and Medicare.
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