Bill Would Make Insurance Cover Treatment For Detransitioners

Soren Aldaco was 19 when a surgeon amputated her healthy breasts on the recommendation of a therapist who responded to the teen’s gender dysphoria by encouraging her to pursue irreversible surgery. Now one of the many young people who regret being deceived by transgender ideology, Aldaco sued her therapist for malpractice, and in a landmark case the Texas Supreme Court affirmed her suit can move forward.

But there’s another cost for the victims of trans mania that Aldaco told me is “too often overlooked”: the expensive medical care that’s often required to treat the lifelong physical consequences of transgender interventions.

Texas passed landmark legislation last year requiring insurance companies that foot the bill for transgender procedures to also cover rehabilitative care for people who “detransition” after receiving opposite-sex hormones and elective amputations. Now, new legislation introduced in the U.S. Congress by Rep. Diana Harshbarger of Tennessee could expand those requirements nationwide.

“It’s outrageous that a health plan can cover sex-rejecting procedures but refuse to cover the restorative care patients need to address the harm they cause. That’s not a fair deal for patients who want to restore healthy bodily function,” Harshbarger said in a press release announcing the proposal. “Patients should never be abandoned after undergoing life-altering, harmful medical interventions once reality sets in.”

Dubbed the Treatment and Restoration Uniformity and Transparency in Health Coverage (TRUTH in Coverage) Act, the legislation has a companion bill in the U.S. Senate introduced by Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas.

The act would require private insurers that cover “sex-rejecting procedures,” such as genital mutilation and opposite-sex hormones, to pay for “restorative care” for victims of transgender procedures. The measure would force these insurers to provide financial coverage, including for costs of copayments and deductibles, for the devastating, extensive damage. (The act does not classify as “sex-rejecting procedures” any legitimate treatments for rare cases of sexual disorders “determined through genetic or biochemical testing.”)

Chloe Cole, another young woman victimized by the gender-transition industry as a minor, joined Aldaco in celebrating the effort. “Kids suffering the harms of sex-rejecting procedures deserve financial access to medical treatments that would reverse those effects,” she said. If passed, the law would amend the Public Health Service Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and the Internal Revenue Code, and go into effect for plans starting on or after Jan. 1, 2027.

Expansive Coverage

Proponents of medicalized transgender interventions are blindly ideological, claiming the procedures are safe and effective. They ignore the mutilated, sterilized, and otherwise sickened men and women left to recover without medical support.

Suicide rates are significantly elevated in the individuals who have undergone these procedures. Yet radical medical organizations and leadership in nearly half the states continue to propagate these atrocities. The TRUTH Act poses a significant threat to the industry and would force extensive documentation of how much harm it has done under the guise of so-called “gender affirming care.”

Under the act, covered care would include treatment for impaired reproductive and endocrine systems, sexual and urinary function injuries, cross-sex hormone damage to male or female physiology, bone degradation, cardiovascular disease, reconstructive surgery, physical therapy, cancer treatment, psychiatric and psychological treatment, testing, and fertility care. These are injuries with preexisting diagnosis codes and treatments, allowing immediate access for thousands of injured persons, if insurance companies are required to cover them.

The law would also provide an unprecedented level of transparency into the horrific effects of transgender surgeries and opposite-sex hormones, and bring “long-overdue justice,” said Dr. Michelle Cretella, Adolescent Health Council co-chair at the American College of Pediatricians. Profiting insurers have ignored the systemic harm “across multiple organ systems” caused by “puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and cross-sex surgeries” for more than a decade, Cretella added.

Resistance to Restorative Care

Insurance companies drive the lucrative trans industry through reimbursements, but have been resistant to accommodating restorative procedures. Insurance coverage is heavily dependent on ICD-10 codes — standardized diagnosis numbers created by the World Health Organization and managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Health workers include these codes in the reimbursement requests they send to insurance companies. Although approved diagnosis codes backing “transition” procedures exist in the system, “detransition” codes don’t exist, a major stumbling block for those seeking restorative care.

Anticipating the need, Do No Harm recommended a new code for “Gender Identity Disorder in Remission (Desistance)” to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. If added to the CDC’s ICD-10-CM system, it would make detransitioners visible in health care records, insurance billing, and research, Cretella said. She said Do No Harm and ACPeds are “cautiously optimistic” the CDC will implement the change.

The chaos caused by gender experimentation is not easily undone. New protocols will need to be established over time. Specific guidelines for tapering patients off opposite-sex hormone regimens don’t exist yet, and would require health professionals to partner across specialties, Cretella said.

But at a time rogue judges have blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to end transgender surgeries for minors altogether, the legislation is a new flank in the fight against the transgender-industrial complex. While the Justice Department secures agreements with some clinics to end destructive transgender procedures and offer detransition care to minors, Harshbarger’s bill could help victims of transgender ideology access the real care they need.

Ashley Bateman is a policy writer for The Heartland Institute. Her work has been featured in The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The New York Post, The American Thinker, the Ascension Press blog, and numerous other publications. She previously worked as an adjunct scholar for The Lexington Institute and as editor, writer, and photographer for The Warner Weekly, a publication for the American military community in Bamberg, Germany. She and her brilliant engineer/scientist husband homeschool their six children.