Chloe Cole had her healthy breasts cut off at age 15 – and American taxpayers funded it.
Now Doctor Oz just ended that.
And Medicaid and CHIP just closed a funding spigot that should have never been opened in the first place.
The Science Finally Caught Up With Common Sense
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t need to invent justification.
He cited the UK’s Cass Review – the most comprehensive independent analysis of pediatric gender medicine ever conducted.
Dr. Hilary Cass spent four years reviewing the evidence base for these interventions and found it “built on shaky foundations.”
Her review concluded that puberty blockers moved from clinical trial to widespread use before anyone proved they were safe.
The result: the UK permanently banned puberty blockers for minors in December 2024.
Oz and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. read the same research and reached the same conclusion.
“Children deserve our protection, not experimental interventions that pose serious risks and convey no proven benefits,” Oz said.
CMS now lists the documented harms of these procedures: infertility, impaired sexual function, diminished bone density, altered brain development, and other permanent physiological damage.
These aren’t hypothetical risks.
These are what happened to kids like Chloe Cole.
What Your Tax Dollars Were Paying For
Cole started puberty blockers at 13.
She had a double mastectomy at 15.
By 16, she was suicidal – not before the surgeries, but after them.
She told Congress in 2023 that the specialist told her parents they could have a dead daughter or a live transgender son – before she had ever expressed a single suicidal thought.
“I wasn’t suicidal. I was a happy child who struggled because she was different,” she testified. “However, at 16, after my surgery, I did become suicidal.”
https://twitter.com/ChloeCole/status/2084344687381623132?s=20
That specialist – who used fear to push a vulnerable family into irreversible procedures – was operating inside a system where Medicaid and CHIP covered the bill.
American taxpayers were financing the pipeline from confused teenager to permanent medical patient.
The CBO estimated that cutting this Medicaid funding saves $700 million over ten years.
That’s $700 million that was going toward procedures CMS now officially classifies as lacking “sufficiently reliable evidence of clinical benefit.”
The Last Protection for Kids Who Can’t Protect Themselves
What makes this decision significant isn’t just the money.
Federal funding is a stamp of legitimacy.
When Medicaid covered puberty blockers and surgeries, it signaled that the federal government believed these procedures were medically necessary – the legal standard for Medicaid coverage.
That stamp made it harder for parents to resist, easier for doctors to push, and impossible for states to defund without fighting Washington.
Oz just removed the stamp.
The new rule includes a six-month tapering period for children currently receiving hormone treatments – but the pipeline closes.
Mental health treatment for gender dysphoria remains covered.
https://twitter.com/donoharm/status/2087225791641686295?s=20
No one is abandoning kids struggling with identity.
The administration is simply refusing to pay for irreversible physical interventions on children who cannot legally drive, get a tattoo, or enlist in the military – interventions that the UK, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark have already restricted after reviewing the same evidence.
Chloe Cole called it the biggest medical scandal in American history.
She was right.
And the Trump administration just officially agreed.
Sources:
- Peter D’Abrosca, “Medicaid ends funding for child sex-change procedures as Trump admin slams ‘experimental’ treatments,” Fox News, August 11, 2026.
- Danielle Wallace, “Detransitioner issues ‘desperate plea’ to lawmakers at emotional gender hearing: ‘My childhood was ruined,'” Fox News, July 27, 2023.
- “The Final Cass Review and the NHS England Response,” Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), April 11, 2024.
- “Puberty blockers: what you need to know,” UK Department of Health and Social Care, December 11, 2024.
- “Medicaid Program; Prohibition on Federal Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program Funding for Sex-Rejecting Procedures Furnished to Children,” Federal Register, December 19, 2025.