DAVID MARCUS: Detransitioning is actual 'gender-affirming care,' so why won't insurance cover it?

Fox News

21-02-2025

It is a rather competitive category, but high on the list of the most Orwellian newspeak terms of the 21st Century is "gender-affirming care." This vile euphemism seeks to hide the fact that what it really means is irreversible medical procedures often used on children confused about their gender.
But these days, more and more young people are detransitioning, accepting the reality of their sex, and seeking medical care to reverse what was done to them when they thought they could change their gender. This is a kind of "gender-affirming care" we should all get behind.
A recent study showed that two-thirds of kids who suffer from gender dysphoria change their minds when they become adults, which is a clear and obvious argument as to why no child should ever medically transition. But what about those who go through with chemical or even surgical procedures, only to come to regret it?
Chloe Cole, who has become an activist detransitioner, has written about her experience after beginning medical transition at age 12, something her doctors enthusiastically approved of. And what happened a few years later when she sought to reverse the transition? Here is how she described the situation she and others have faced to the New York Post:
"…the same medical establishment that encouraged them suddenly ignores them. They'll struggle to get the mental-health care they need. They'll struggle to get the treatments and surgeries they need. And they and their families will struggle to find health insurance that pays for their medical needs. Instead, they'll pay through the nose for decades to come."
Think about this. Insurance companies will crawl over broken glass to pay for the mutilation of children in the name of progressive religion, but many won't spend a dime to undo the tragic harm they have done.
Insurance companies will crawl over broken glass to pay for the mutilation of children in the name of progressive religion, but many won't spend a dime to undo the tragic harm they have done.
Last year, Arizona State Sen. Janae Shamp introduced a bill that would require insurance companies to pay for detransitioning. She said at the time of these companies, "They haven't even set up codes to be able to diagnose. That's unheard of in the medical world. And that means we have a political ideology directing it. And that has to stop."
In North Carolina, Prisha Mosley is suing the doctors who performed procedures to make her appear male. According to the lawsuit: "These individuals whom Prisha trusted to care for her lied to and misled her into these treatments and procedures for the purpose of making money off of her and bolstering their credentials in the emerging field of so-called 'gender-affirming care."
Instead of taking these tragic and ever-growing cases of detransition seriously, the medical establishment and the media are often dismissive, if not outright hostile to them. Take a 2023 New York Times headline that read, "How a few stories of regret fuel the push to restrict gender transition care."
The attitude of the Gray Lady here, and of most of the Democratic Party, seems to be something along the lines of, 'Sure, a few people might change their minds after it's too late, but we can't let that stop us from chemically and surgically altering the bodies of confused minors.'
At best, this attitude is insane. At worst, it is evil.
Congress should act with all due expediency to pass legislation that compels any insurance company that pays for gender transition to also pay for detransition. It is honestly just plain common sense.
Further, legal barriers, such as statutes of limitation, should be stripped away for those who were duped by doctors and mental health experts more concerned with ideological purity than their patients' well-being.
Public attitudes about the trans issue have moved strongly in the past decade, with majorities of Americans saying there are only two sexes and that men should not compete in women's sports. It's time for our laws to catch up to this reality.
But swaying public opinion was only step one. Now, the machinery and infrastructure of gender-bending child mutilation must be attacked on all fronts, not just with lawsuits, but in guarantees that detransitioning is also paid for.
It is as if America is waking up from a strange dream, one in which reality did not quite exist, in which the confused whims of children became written as scars on their bodies, and in the light of day, we comprehend its horror.
Now is the time to act, not just to ban any medical transitioning of children, but also to assure that those who have undergone such procedures have the resources to access actual gender-affirming care, and undo what can be undone.