It Started With Obamacare
Profiting from the pain of children
by Sue Greenwald, MD
As a Pediatrician who spent 35 years taking care of abused children, I am old enough to remember when the genital mutilation of minors was considered child abuse. That was before it became insanely profitable.
The 2010 Obamacare law mandated the coverage of transgender procedures, which at the time affected about one in 10,000 people. (The mandated coverage began Jan. 2017.)
Now every major University Hospital has a Transgender Clinic with a menu of surgeries offered. Last year Vanderbilt University exposed the field as a “big money maker” and said entire hospitals can be supported by these surgeries, as they require multiple follow-ups. That means that people are not cured by the surgeries, instead they become life-long patients requiring more surgeries to fix the complications. Luring in young patients, before they can understand the adult consequences, keeps the gravy train rolling. Dissenting doctors are threatened and silenced.
Major medical associations, like the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics, depend on these Universities for membership and donations. So, they decided they could live with defining “gender affirming care” as telling a girl she is a boy, and “conversion therapy” as telling a girl she is a girl. No wonder the kids are confused.
If fact, the 2018 AAP Policy Statement for “Gender Affirming Care” which is often quoted by court judges and policy makers, was actually written by one man, Dr. Jason Rafferty, who is specialist in gender care. He disclosed he has no conflicts of interest.
Planned Parenthood is cashing in on the trend, providing cross-sex hormones and promoting gender ideology in schools through their Comprehensive Sexuality Education curriculum that was recently thwarted in most of Nebraska. In some states, the Planned Parenthood clinics are moving offices into the schools, overcoming the problem of patients too young to drive themselves across town. Hormones are life-long treatment, again the younger the patient, the longer you can profit from them.
Drug companies are certainly not complaining.
The number of trans-identifying youth tripled between 2017 and 2021 nationally. In school districts where gender curriculum flourishes, the rise has been more exponential.
This windfall to the medical industry is coming from your insurance premiums and your taxes, as these treatments are mandated. Who would have guessed in 2010 that an entire industry could be created from a loophole designed to help a few disenfranchised people? Who could have foreseen that it would be used for kids as young as age 3?
The devastation to young people and their families has been tremendous. So much so that over half the states are seeking to restrict the school to clinic pipeline. Nebraska’s kids deserve the same protection.
Photo credit: The Epoch Times
The author is a retired Pediatrician and a co-founder of the Protect Nebraska Children Coalition.