Secretary for Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies on Tuesday, May 20, 2025, in front of a sub -committee of the Senate Center (Screenshot from the Committee Webcast)
Washington-the US Ministry of Health asked the health service providers on Wednesday to stop several treatments for children with gender dysphoria, including puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and operations.
The announcement was only a few hours before the centers for Medicare & Medicaid services sent letters to hospitals across the country, which promised to promise “a comprehensive review of federal payment policy” and to demand information on how they determine children and adolescents can give their approval.
“These are irreversible procedures with high risk carried out at endangered children, often at the expense of the taxpayer,” wrote the CMS administrator Dr. Mehmet OZ in a statement that accompanied the letter from his agency.
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in A two -sided open letter that is shared on social media That health service providers should read a review that HHS published at the beginning of this month about treatment options for children with gender dysphoria. However, he did not notice that paper was widely criticized by enormous health organizations.
Instead, Kennedy said that HHS expects the health service providers to follow The 409-page report Recommendations and “Create the necessary updates of your treatment protocols and the training for the care of children and adolescents with gender dysphoria to protect them from these harmful interventions.”
In the letter, “Psychotherapy (Talk Therapy) as a non-invasive alternative” is recommended and tries to prevent the health service providers from following the Professional Association for Health The health standard for the health of transgender and gender differences, version 8.
One of the criticisms of writing for this supply standard is that it was more based on legal and political considerations as clinical considerations. “
“The hippocratic oath determines the basic commitment to the medical profession:” First, does no harm. “The review makes it clear that” the evidence of the pediatric medical transition is very uncertain, while the evidence of damage is less uncertain, “says the HHS letter.” For this reason, the check that health service providers, if ‘medical interventions are unnecessary, disproportionate damage risks, should reject it, even if they prefer or prompted them or prompted them from patients be asked. “
HHS did not immediately answer a request for a comment about what would happen to health service providers who decide to continue to prescribe the treatment protocols that the Federal Government remedy.
Associations say that HHS is incorrectly presenting research
WPath and the US professional association for transgender health published a joint explanation At the beginning of this month, after HHS published his first report, he said that “the existing research is wrong and the expertise of experts who have been working with transgender and gender diverse youth for decades.”
“The HHS report does not correspond to the established scientific standards,” wrote the two organizations. “Written anonymously, it is based on discredited stories and selectively compiled earlier systematic checks, with critical results from the latest studies, which support the treatment interventions for adequately identified persons. Instead of carrying out a new systematic reviews, the report rejects several international clinical guidelines and ignores the prevailing medical consensus on the asset control of the medical consensus. “
The explanation states that WPath “supports a comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation to ensure that psychiatric specialists evaluate and approach all mental illnesses that occur simultaneously in adolescents who examine their gender identity and their treatment options.”
Dr. Susan J. Kressly, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, wrote in A opinion Published according to the previous HHS report that the document “misrepresented the current medical consensus and does not reflect the realities of pediatric care”.
“AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, but our guidelines and intentions behind our recommendations were quoted in imprecise and misleading ways,” wrote Kress. “The report prioritizes the opinions on passionate evidence.”
WPATH and the American Academy of Pediatrics did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the HHS letter published on Wednesday.
The endocrine society, which represents more than 18,000 health service providers, treat and research diabetes, obesity, fertility, bone health and hormone-related cancer-related cancer, as well as the gender dysphoria on Wednesday in an explanation that was shared on Wednesday with the states of the newsroom that the “guideline development process” was shared by the highest standards of trust The National Acady Methods of National Acadmisy determined by Medicine.
“The widely recognized view of the professional medical community is that medical treatment is suitable for teenagers of transgender and gender diverses that experience continuing feelings of gender dysphoria,” said the explanation of endocrine society. “Medical studies show that access to this care improves the well-being of transgender and non-bobs.”
Matt Rose, Senior Public Policy Advocate at the Human Rights Campaign, wrote in a statement that the letter published on Wednesday is: “HHS focuses on the time and the taxpayers’ dollars that spread against misinformation against knowledge science in order to best impair the decisions of healthcare with their doctors.”
“This approach is not only ignorant, but also deliberately harmful to a community that depends on proven procedures, evidence -based healthcare system in order to lead their most authentic life,” wrote Rose. “This letter does nothing but trying to scare and force the providers to make the Trump government’s commandment.”
The Republican Senator of Louisiana, Bill Cassidy – Chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pension – celebrated the HHS letter.
“As a doctor, I am extremely concerned that medical organizations continue to advance irreversible processes of the gender for children against scientific data,” Cassidy wrote in a statement. “I welcome President (Donald) Trump’s strong lead to tell the provider that these dangerous practices have to end.”
CMS requires information on gender care
The centers for Medicare & Medicaid services were sent A separate letter Wednesday to hospitals that carry out gender procedures and asked them to answer a number of questions next month.
The CMS administrator OZ wrote in a statement that was published in addition to the letter that hospitals “acceptance of federal funds for strict quality standards and the highest level of administration in relation to public resources.
In the letter, hospitals are asked to be too detailed from this, as employees find that children with gender dysphoria are able to provide medical approval for a procedure and when the parents’ consent is necessary.
Hospitals are asked to communicate CMS, whether they are planning to update their guidelines for clinical practice, as requested in the HHS letter sent before.
And hospitals should share information about “undesirable events related to these procedures, especially for children who later try after rejection”.
In the CMS letter, the hospitals are also shown that they share billing information for the costs of pediatric gender-known care processes that “have been paid by the Federal Government in whole or in part”. The letter states that the information is used to “carry out a comprehensive review of the federal payment guidelines in connection with the gender procedures for patients under the age of 19”.
