The Trump administration announced a new rule that would prevent federal Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program dollars from funding gender-affirming care for children after Oct. 13.
The rule, announced Tuesday, is part of a wider White House push to restrict transgender or nonbinary children from receiving gender-affirming procedures — particularly surgery, which is already a rare option for youth — and to more strictly define gender.
The rule blocks federal funding from going toward puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormone therapy and gender-affirming surgery. It provides an exemption for treatments related to intersex conditions or complications from prior procedures.
The rule also carves out up to six months of funding for those already receiving gender-affirming hormone therapy after criticism rose during the public comment period. That funding is meant to allow beneficiaries “to phase off these medications in a manner that allows for clinical discretion.”
Trending
“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that can have dangerous, lifelong consequences,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz said in a video announcing the rule.
“The government cannot keep signing these checks,” he continued, calling evidence for the procedures “weak.”
The rule bars funding for federal-state healthcare programs from going toward such gender-affirming care, but states can still help separately cover treatment costs. Over half of states have enacted laws limiting youth access to gender-affirming care, according to health policy organization KFF.
The agency projected a reduction in Medicaid and CHIP spending by $235 million over the next decade. More than $28 million of the roughly $31 million of Medicaid dollars spent on gender dysphoria treatment in 2023 went to hormone therapy or puberty blockers, the rule says, citing an analysis from that year. A little over $2.3 million went to inpatient or outpatient hospital services with surgery in the same time period.
Republicans at the state and federal level have moved to limit legal protections and health care access for transgender people while leaning heavily on the issue as a campaign message over the last two years. Trump on Tuesday applauded the agency’s announcement, reiterating his longstanding position against gender-affirming surgeries for children.
“Please remember this when you are casting your vote in the Midterm Elections in November,” he wrote on Truth Social.
A number of medical organizations, including the American Psychological Association, support wide access to psychological care and evidence-based treatment for transgender and nonbinary people.
Past White House efforts to curb gender-affirming care include Trump’s January 2025 order meant to cut off funding for similar treatments for people under 19, which prompted a lawsuit from Oregon, Washington state and New York.
Another coalition of states sued Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in December 2025 over an order that called gender-affirming treatments unsafe and ineffective and warned that doctors could be excluded from federal health programs for providing this care.
Author
