Trump’s New Medicaid Rule Strips Care from Low-Income Families of Transgender Youth

This story originally appeared on The Advocate.The Trump administration has finalized a rule cutting off Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program funding for gender-affirming medical care for transgender young people, turning the federal government’s financial leverage over two programs for low-income Americans into its latest tool against trans people’s access to healthcare.The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rule requires state Medicaid programs to stop paying for what the administration calls “sex-rejecting procedures” for people younger than 18 and imposes a corresponding prohibition on CHIP for those younger than 19. It is scheduled for publication in the Federal Register Thursday and takes effect 60 days later.“Every young person is entitled to the health care that they, their parents, and their medical providers agree that they need, without politicians interfering with these important and highly personal decisions,” Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement to The Advocate criticizing the rule.Related: Donald Trump targets trans kids while abandoning Americans’ real needs around affordability“Rather than working to make healthcare more affordable and accessible, the Trump administration continues to obsess over the healthcare needs of trans youth,” Robinson said. “The Trump administration is terrorizing trans youth and their families with these kinds of actions, and it has to stop.”Adrian Shanker, who served in the Biden administration at the Department of Health and Human Services, including as deputy assistant secretary for health policy and senior adviser on LGBTQI+ health equity, told The Advocate that the populations covered by Medicaid and CHIP make the rule particularly consequential.“The entire purpose of Medicaid is that Medicaid is health insurance for low-income people. CHIP is health insurance for children from low-income families,” Shanker said. “These are the insurance sys