HRC Article:
WASHINGTON — Last night, President Biden signed the FY25 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) into law, which includes a provision inserted by Speaker Mike Johnson blocking healthcare for the transgender children of military servicemembers. This provision, the first anti-LGBTQ+ federal law enacted since the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, will rip medically necessary care from the transgender children of thousands of military families – families who make incredible sacrifices in defense of the country each and every day. The last anti-LGBTQ+ federal law that explicitly targeted military servicemembers was Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, which went into effect in 1994.
Biden’s press release:
No service member should have to decide between their family’s health care access and their call to serve our Nation.
There are about 2 million minors on Tricare. Around 1% of the population is trans, then that’s 20,000 kids. The suicide attempt rate among trans kids untreated is about 40%. If only a quarter of those succeed, that’s 2,000 dead kids among Tricare’s current enrollees.
Now your despicable suggestion that people rely on GoFundMe for their life-saving healthcare? Or your hope that most families on Tricare have good insurance through their other partner? When military famously move so much that the other partner mantaining a good job is difficult? Those have obvious problems with them. The GoFundMe is a particularly demonic suggestion. Suffice it so say that no, thousands of families of trans kids are not going to find donors for thousands a year on fucking GoFundMe. This is healthcare, and that is what health insurance is for.
So yes, thousands of dead children is not in any way an exaggeration. Congress just willingly voted to murder several thousand children. And people like you are perfectly happy with it, as you do not consider trans people to be human beings.
The percentage of people who attempt suicide and eventually succeed is actually more like 10-15%. Receiving medical treatment is a factor in whether a trans child attempts suicide, but it is only one of many, and not the most important. In 2022 Tricare had a total of 2,500 kids receiving some form of gender affirming care, a far cry from your estimate of 20,000. I really don’t want to quibble too much on the numbers because 1 kid is too many, but it’s not going to be thousands in any case.
I was also not talking specifically about puberty blockers, not mental healthcare in general. Where I was mistaken, is that puberty blockers are actually not impacted by this bill at all, and will still be made available. Since you are an apparent activist on this issue, I would have thought that was something you would have caught. The treatments being disallowed are specifically those that might “result in sterilization” - treatments that are rarely ever performed on trans minors. I want to be clear here in saying that this does not mean I think the change is OK.
Lets be clear about the nature of my suggestion. It’s analogous to explaining how two people can share a gas mask in a chemical attack. It’s not how I think it should work, but it’s an option that’s better than nothing. My perspective is that the only people who should be involved in these decisions are doctors, patients, and if applicable patients. Medical care should be a right, but I know that’s not where things are today - for anyone.
And, again, we don’t know what was on the table that might have been even worse. What we do know is that if the bill didn’t get passed that all healthcare benefits would be impacted for every military family, not to mention delays in pay. If the Democrats held a hard line and refused to compromise, the Republicans could just hold off a month and bypass the Democrats altogether. Then we might actually have seen all gender affirming care pulled, instead of just care for minors that might result in sterilization.
I’ll say this again too. I don’t give the Democrats a complete pass on this. In this particular situation I don’t think they had a choice, but in the past several years they have avoided this topic almost completely and allowed Republicans to frame the entire issue. I have deep problems with what Democrats did leading up to this situation that helped put them in this spot.