Unbeknownst to most Americans, the Biden administration has been trying to mandate that health insurance plans under Obamacare cover experimental drugs and surgeries to appease a radical transgender agenda.
But those efforts came to a temporary halt when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) finalized a regulation that left out a controversial transgender insurance mandate present in the original proposed rule. This means that for now, Americans won’t be forced to pay higher insurance premiums to cover puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, hysterectomies on healthy women, breast implants in men, and other cross-sex surgeries on anyone, including children.
Roger Severino, the new vice president of domestic policy at The Heritage Foundation, led a coalition of experts and policy advocates in submitting formal comments against this rule in his capacity as senior fellow for the Ethics & Public Policy Center (EPPC). The Heritage Foundation’s and EPPC’s comments are available here and here. Coalition members objected to the Biden administration’s various unlawful attempts to insert gender ideology in health care through this rule both in comments and in meetings with the Office of Management and Budget.
Rather than respond to the comments as it would have been required to by law, HHS chose to abandon the transgender mandate from the rule altogether.
“This is a great victory for Americans who oppose government requiring them to pay for ideologically driven drugs and surgeries that ultimately lead to sterilization of other people, including children.” Severino said. “Our broad coalition deserves credit for making the Biden administration hit the brakes on an LGBT initiative for the first time.”
While this doesn’t stop the government from bringing up this or similar transgender mandates in the future, Heritage, EPPC, and coalition partners have put the Biden administration on alert that Americans will resist this type of government overreach and require them to justify their actions every step of the way.
“If HHS wants to relitigate the issue in the future, it will have to start the process all over again, and when that time comes, Heritage and our allies will be ready to fight back even harder,” Severino added.
Learn more about how Obamacare’s gender identity mandate threatens personal freedom.
