After days of infighting over Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” the House GOP passed reconciliation legislation in the dead of the night — with one major giveaway to the far-right.
Late Wednesday, Congressional Republicans amended the bill to prohibit the use of Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care, potentially ripping healthcare access away from hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans.
An earlier version of the legislation targeted Medicaid funding for gender-affirming care for minors. In a midnight-hour maneuver, Republicans removed the word “minors” from that provision, prohibiting the use of Medicaid funding for “gender-transition procedures” for children as well as adults.
The legislation broadly defines “gender-transition procedures” as everything from surgery to hormone therapy. It needs only a simple majority to pass the Senate.
Experts on transgender health care said that if this provision advances, it could make an already-dire landscape for transgender care significantly worse.
They described devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of transgender Americans who rely on Medicaid that will be further compounded by the roughly $700 billion in cuts to the health program in the GOP bill.
“There’s not good coverage to begin with.”
“Trans folks are more likely to be lower income and subsequently more likely to qualify for [Medicaid],” said Aspen Ruhlin, community manager at the Mabel Wadsworth Center in Bangor, Maine, which provides LGBTQ+ care, including gender-affirming hormone therapy, as well as abortion care and other health care services.
“This would have a devastating impact on folks, as they would lose coverage for what is normal and needed health care.”
