Florida’s law prohibiting the use of government dollars to pay for transgender medical care has been broken by five Medicaid healthcare insurers, and the state is reportedly now fining them as a result.
This is the first time a state has implemented coverage for gender transition.
One of the treatments one of the plans covered was a 16-year-old girl’s double mastectomy.
The other programs covered cross-sex hormones and hormones to prevent puberty in children.
Late on Thursday, Florida health officials informed the providers in letters that they would be punished for the infraction.
An order from the Agency for Health Care Administration required the state’s Medicaid plan providers to refuse coverage for all such treatments, even though a federal judge recently struck down a new Florida law that prohibited transgender operations and drugs for youngsters.
The FDA conducted a thorough evaluation of the medical literature on procedures, puberty blockers, and medications used to treat transgender youth, leading to the rule’s implementation last August. They are not medically necessary, it was concluded.
However, the five providers still paid for the trans procedures in December, allegedly far after the Medicaid healthcare plan providers were informed of the ban, according to the agency.
As part of a standard audit of the Medicaid system, the infractions were discovered.
Medicaid rule breaches typically happen when providers decline to pay for care that ought to be covered.
It is exceedingly unusual to pay for treatments and medications that have been outlawed, which begs the question of whether the providers’ decisions to cover them were influenced by politics.
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