(LifeSiteNews) – The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (FAHCA) is levying thousands of dollars in fines against Medicaid healthcare insurers in the Sunshine State for using taxpayer funds on underage gender “transition” procedures in violation of Florida rules.
The Daily Wire reported that the agency has notified five providers of the move after a routine audit discovered they had used taxpayer funds to cover puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for minors as well as a double mastectomy on a 16-year-old girl. Such procedures have been disqualified from Medicaid coverage under rules the agency adopted last August.
Not all of the offenders or fines were specified, but the largest is $30,000 against Simply Healthcare for the mastectomy, which also faces a sanction that now must be disclosed whenever it competes for state contracts over the next decade. The provider has reportedly replaced the team responsible for insuring the mastectomy.
“These plans recklessly continued to cover these services with permanent, harmful effects, after the rule was adopted,” and “will not stand in the way of our fight to protect the innocence of Florida’s kids,” FAHCA secretary Jason Weida told the Wire. “We take this issue really seriously. We think that the protection of children is one of the most core functions of government here in Florida, and we’re going to do everything we can to protect children from these surgeries, which are really mutilating children across the country.”
Evidence shows that so-called “gender-affirming care” carries serious harms, especially in the form of physically transformative medical procedures on impressionable children who cannot fully grasp the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them.
Studies find that more than 80% of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide — and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored “detransitioners,” individuals who attempted to live under a different “gender identity” before embracing their sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject.
The danger of keeping parents in the dark about such situations is grimly illustrated in the story of Yaeli Martinez, a 19-year-old to whom “gender transitioning” was touted as a possible cure for her depression in high school, supported by a high school counselor who withheld what she was going through from her mother. The troubled girl killed herself after trying to live as a man for three years.
Opposing gender ideology in healthcare, education, and corporate America has been a cornerstone of Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ proactive conservative record, fueling his 20-point reelection last fall and his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination next year, through which he promises to take such efforts nationwide.