Florida Limits Gender-Affirming Care Under Medicaid
Florida has been in the headlines a lot this past year for its “Don’t Say Gay” law and the complications arising from its implementation, including recent news that anti-LGBTQ “groomer” rhetoric has increased as much as 400% on social media platforms like Twitter. Unfortunately, the state doesn’t seem satisfied with its current anti-LGBTQ policies and has introduced new guidelines regarding Medicaid, this time targeting trans people.
Set to take effect on August 21, Medicaid insurance coverage will be restricted in regard to gender dysphoria treatments for trans people. The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration filed the rule earlier this month. In a prior report, the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration claimed that puberty blockers, hormone replacement therapy, and gender reassignment surgery are neither safe nor effective for the treatment of gender dysphoria.
Secretary for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration Simone Marstiller, says, “We have seen a dangerous mix of politics and medicine from doctors in the Biden administration and many of our medical societies across the United States. It is imperative for states like Florida to step up and ensure our focus remains on the actual evidence, rather than the eminence of a medical society or association.”
In 2021 the American Medical Association released a letter encouraging governors to prevent legislation that would ban gender-affirming care in their states from passing, saying it is “a dangerous intrusion into the practice of medicine.”
Lambda Legal, Southern Legal Counsel, Florida Health Justice Project, and National Health Law Program, issued a joint statement on the rule, stating, “AHCA’s actions, at the behest of Governor (Ron) DeSantis and his political appointees, are morally and legally wrong, as well as medically and scientifically unsound. This rule represents a dangerous escalation in Governor DeSantis’s political zeal to persecute LGBTQ+ people in Florida and particularly transgender youth.”
