(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) John Hopkins Medicine is lobbying in the state of Maryland to include cosmetic transgender surgeries in their Medicaid coverage.
If passed, the Trans Health Equality Act would allow the state’s Medicaid to cover cosmetic surgeries such as covering up surgical scars; making changes to the voice, hair, face and neck; and providing fertility preservation.
According to the Daily Caller, several top-ranking medical officials are slated to give oral testimony at the hearing for the bill.
.@JohnsHopkins University & @HopkinsMedicine sent out a political email to staff saying the institution supports Maryland HB283, a bill that would require taxpayers to fund trans medical treatments that include a long list of cosmetic procedures like hair removal & tracheal shave pic.twitter.com/dl7B6AvXwj
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) February 13, 2023
“If enacted, the law would expand the types of medically necessary gender-affirming treatments that will be covered by Maryland Medicaid MCOs to include, inter alia, hair removal, body contouring, facial gender surgery, tracheal shave, vocal surgery, speech pathology, and fertility preservation,” an internal email explaining the bill read.
“Additionally, the law would ensure that gender-diverse people, such as those who identify as nonbinary, intersex, or two-spirit, are included in coverage,” it said.
If the bill passes, it will also cover hormone therapy, hormone blockers and puberty blockers.
John Hopkins already offers many of these procedures, and can provide care via Medicaid, Maryland Children’s Health Program and Primary Adult Care.
The hospital lobbied for a similar bill in 2022, also called the Trans Health Equity Act.
Helene Hedian, director of clinical education at Johns Hopkins’s Center for Transgender Health, submitted written testimony in favor of the act in 2022 and will speak in favor of the bill in 2023.
“Hair removal and hair transplantation, speech therapy and voice surgery, facial feminization surgery, body contouring, and fertility preservation are all excluded from the current coverage,” Hedian wrote in her 2022 testimony.
“You might ask yourself—why are these procedures medically necessary?” she continued. “Especially given that patients may take hormones which are covered by their current plans.”
She claimed the procedures were not cosmetic or elective, and that “when people are not immediately identifiable as transgender by their appearance or the sound of their voice by a malicious stranger on the street, they are safer.”
Hedian also claimed the already-covered hormonal treatments were inadequate for many patients as they did not alter bone structure, hair growth or voice.
The push to subsidize trans treatments with federal tax dollars comes as congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden have spuriously claimed that their Republican counterparts were trying to end entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare due to their calls for all federal spending programs to be reapproved every five years.
At its current pace, the Left’s profligate spending on Medicaid without additional revenues is likely to bankrupt the program by as early as 2026, Healthline reported.
John Hopkins is not the only prominent institution fighting to push transgender medical treatments into the mainstream healthcare system, as many hospitals and medical institutions stand to gain millions of dollars from the practice.
