Gender-affirming care for transgender youth is at risk in LA and nationwide<\/p>\n
Listen to Imperfect Paradise to hear LAist producer Kevin Tidmarsh talk about what\u2019s next for transgender healthcare in this political moment and how families with trans kids will find care and support now.<\/p>\n
Children\u2019s Hospital of Orange County and Rady Children\u2019s Hospital in San Diego ended their gender affirming hormone therapy on Friday to people under 19, pending a legal challenge from Attorney General Rob Bonta.<\/p>\n
The closure leaves hundreds of patients in limbo at Rady Children\u2019s Health, the largest pediatric hospital system in California. <\/p>\n
Growing restrictions and fewer options<\/p>\n
When San Diego father Brett heard about the Rady Children\u2019s Health closure, he was shocked.<\/p>\n
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\u201cThe whole world kind of dropped out from under me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Brett had been preparing for this after a spate of closures and restrictions last year among California providers and nationwide. But he said he wasn\u2019t ready for the feelings of anger and abandonment that soon followed.<\/p>\n
Brett\u2019s son started getting hormone treatment at Rady Children\u2019s Hospital San Diego about a year and a half ago. Brett says they were happy with their endocrinologist, who was \u201coverwhelmingly loving\u201d \u2014 and he was also comforted by her assurances that they could go off of the hormone treatments if needed.<\/p>\n
He said his family had no plans to cease hormone treatments, since they’ve helped his son come into his identity and massively improved his mental health. But he doesn\u2019t know where he\u2019ll get his son\u2019s testosterone now.<\/p>\n
The legal challenge ahead<\/p>\n
Bonta filed suit on behalf of the state seeking a permanent injunction citing that the hospital broke its contract when it guaranteed the health care system would maintain the same level of gender-affirming care through 2034.<\/p>\n
Though the lawsuit is a narrow one that only applies to Rady Children Health, it was still celebrated by LGBTQ groups and organizers in Orange County.<\/p>\n
A CHOC spokesperson told LAist at the time that it would address Bonta\u2019s concerns \u201cthrough the legal process.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bonta filed the suit in the state Superior Court of San Diego County. The court has yet to issue a ruling on Bonta\u2019s request for an injunction.<\/p>\n
Providers in California and nationwide feel fear<\/p>\n
Experts have said this follows actions from the Trump administration to restrict gender-affirming care through a variety of enforcement mechanisms. The most recent action threatened to pull Medicare and Medicaid funding to hospitals that provide gender-affirming hormones and surgeries to minors.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople go into pediatrics or adolescent medicine because they care about kids, not because they want to have some giant fight with the federal government about an existential question of whether their hospital or their clinic can stay open,\u201d said Kellan Baker, senior advisor for health policy at the think tank Movement Advancement Project.<\/p>\n
Baker pointed to statistics that hospitals nationwide receive about 50% of their funding from Medicare and Medicaid. At some, such as Children\u2019s Hospital Los Angeles, that percentage is even higher.<\/p>\n
Alex Sheldon, executive director of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBTQ+ Equality, is also worried about whether the federal government will use these same policies to restrict funding for areas like vaccine and cancer research.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u200aThis is like forcing a firefighter not to use water because the government doesn’t like who lives in the burning house,\u201d they said. \u201cThose flames will spread and everyone will get burned.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Trump administration weighs in<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that gender affirming care did \u201cnot meet professionally recognized standards of health care.\u201d<\/p>\n
The American Academy of Pediatrics<\/a>, the Endocrine Society<\/a> and the American Psychological Association<\/a> have all opposed that view, saying that this care is evidence-based and necessary for trans mental health.<\/p>\n Families forced to make other plans<\/p>\n Other providers, including telehealth providers, can step in to fill the gap, though some families say they aren\u2019t a replacement for in-person services.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200aWe’ll do everything in our power to protect providers from this large scale efforts of criminalization of care that remains legal,\u201d said Sheldon, who says they\u2019ve been in touch with hundreds of medical providers in California and across the country.<\/p>\n For his part, Brett understands the position his doctors are in and doesn\u2019t blame them for the hospital\u2019s decisions. But his family is now considering moving abroad.<\/p>\n It\u2019ll be a hard pill for Brett to swallow, since he can trace his ancestry back to a signer of the Declaration of Independence.<\/p>\n \u201cThere’s a feeling of having to flee this country,\u201d he said. \u201c\u200aAnd that means leaving the country that we were all born in, that we all love, that we believed would protect every citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gender-affirming care for transgender youth is at risk in LA and nationwide Listen to Imperfect Paradise to hear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":456186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[213223,213224,63080,97,252,253,213225],"class_list":["post-456185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-attorney-general-rob-bonta","tag-childrens-hospital-of-orange-county","tag-gender-affirming-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-trans-youth-care"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/456186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}