“At least six major hospitals have agreed to refuse gender-affirming hormones and surgery for transgender young people and agreed to make payments to the federal government, according to deals with the Department of Justice”, Associated Press reporter Geoff Mulvihill writes today.
Mulvihill, who covers both gender medicine and abortion topics at the state level for AP, notes that hospitals have resisted the Trump administration accessing patient records, and a 9th Circuit ruling has broken the dam on Trump administration subpoenas.
The AP article does not use the word ‘fraud’, thereby failing to inform readers just why six hospitals have already folded under pressure from the Trump Department of Justice to shutter their pediatric sex rejection clinics.
Mulvihill does inform his readers that this phrase has come into common use by the administration in its court battles against the gender clinics, though he does not seem to approve. As always, it is honest language that gets the most outrage.
In an update to the AP article, Mulvihill clarifies that the hospitals are paying settlements to the government rather than paying “to reverse transitions”. He does not use the word ‘detransition’ for the return leg of the ‘gender journey’ because it is not supposed to exist.
Mulvihill quotes Eliel Cruz, a cofounder of something called the Gender Liberation Movement. Cruz “has protested hospitals that have ended the care. Cruz said some families have moved to other states for access to treatment, only to find providers stop it there. Some, he said, have left the country.”
This is fake news. This is the Associated Press. But I repeat myself.
Writing for The New York Times, Amy Harmon does much better by informing readers in the first paragraph that the Department of Justice is investigating “potential legal violations related to billing practices and consumer fraud.” In the interests of balance, however, she lets the other side speak at length.
“Some critics have argued that the Justice Department was acting in bad faith, raising financial questions to intimidate hospitals into ending services that are permitted in their states and to carry out the Trump administration’s policy goals.”
So-called gender-affirming care is still legal in 23 states, goes the argument: evil Trump just won’t leave the poor transes alone.
This is the new line of defense that Madison Pauly attempted to organize in August at Mother Jones, a progressive publication that really ought to change their name to Birthing Person Jones, just to be consistent with their principles.
Look! SQUIRREL! …A right wing squirrel!
Rather than address the fraud, or attempt to spin the details of the fraud, Pauly prefers to focus on the “right wing” sources of information used in the recent HHS report, “Wolves In White Coats”, that explains the vast fraud in gender medicine billing.
“The report frames these billing practices as a kind of fraud”, Pauly writes: a KIND of fraud, as if to imply that it’s barely even a real crime because conservatives caught onto it. Americans can, and do, go to prison for this exact kind of coding fraud in other areas of medicine, so activist-journalism must resort to special pleading, here.
Instead of billing for the diagnosis found in DSM-V, the standard diagnostic reference published by the American Psychiatric Association, the now-shuttered clinics submitted false claims for nonexistent endocrine disorders.
Preliminary evidence suggests that more than 95 percent of all ‘gender medicine’ billing everywhere in America has likely been fraudulent. Coding fraud has been extensive and pervasive.
Pauly worries that this “could be a successful angle of attack in the administration’s broader project to wipe out gender-affirming care for minors.” He is right to worry, and wrong to mislead his readers on the seriousness of criminal fraud.
Rather than an argument on the merits of these cases, Pauley has presented readers with a list of enemies. Terrible, no-good right wingers are not allowed to notice naked insurance billing code fraud at scale.
Harmon’s newspaper is as ‘woke’ as any in America, yet compared to other legacy media outlets, the NYT has done a better job than the other two presented here of informing their readers while the science of ‘trans kids’ has come unsettled in the last two years.
Activists are choosing their preferred enemies. Like Mulvihill, Harmon quotes the Gender Liberation Movement.
“It’s devastating to watch, one by one, health care institutions that once cared for trans youth turn their backs on them,” said Raquel Willis, the organization's executive director.
Harmon also quotes a parent’s disappointment that Connecticut Children’s Medical Center agreed to stop medicalizing minors.
“By agreeing to this settlement, the hospital has doubled down,” Hannah Hussey, a lawyer for the parents, said in a statement. “Not only on that breach of faith with parents and patients, but on its attempt to thwart its obligation under Connecticut law to provide medical care without discrimination.”
It is “discrimination” to shut down the systemic fraud of pediatric sex rejection. The new plan for ‘saving’ the ‘trans kids’ is public pressure on the institutions that don’t want to defend themselves and their people against criminal fraud charges.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James can sue to keep a New York clinic open, to no avail. Colorado has also tried to strong-arm a restart of a shuttered state hospital clinic. These efforts fail because there is no constitutional principle that can make a doctor or a hospital risk criminal prosecution for black-letter fraud.
According to Cruz, the Gender Liberation Movement representative quoted in Mulvihill’s piece, the real issue here is “who has the courage to do what their calling and education calls them to do — which is do no harm — and those (who do) not.” Which is an irony for the age.
Harming children for cosmetic purposes is wrong. In Associated Press-land, it is harmful not to harm a child for cosmetic purposes.
Pauly assails the organization Do No Harm, not just for criticizing the harms of chemical and surgical sex lobotomy on minors, but also for noticing just how large the coding fraud is, and of course, for being “right wing”.
“Transition surgery for people under 18 is rare,” Mulvihill lies dissembles spins prevaricates, “but many transgender youth receive hormones to block puberty or to trigger development of sex-linked characteristics consistent with their gender identity.”
We must give children cosmetic sex changes before they are old enough to have sex, otherwise they will die and the wrong politics will win.
Politics are usually the last resort of any fraud worthy of the title, and this fraud came with potential charges of criminal extortion.
Nice trans kid, mom and dad. Would be a pity if something happened to it. Mr. Mulvihill stresses that no laws were broken by any gender transition. What is the fuss even about, then?
A criminal enterprise
Nothing in the AP article informs the reader of the massive fraud committed through ICD insurance coding fraud by these hospitals, or that they did it on the instructions of WPATH, the World Professional Association of Transgender Health.
Mulvihill, Harmon, and Pauley all fail to connect the dots for readers: WPATH is also defending itself from the Federal Trade Commission and four state attorneys general over their role in this massive, harmful fraud. These are not separate stories, they are the same story.
These articles don’t mention WPATH at all. Nobody does, lately, for some reason that no press outlet can seem to explain in any of their coverage of this issue. Readers of The Distance are better-informed on this story than readers of the Associated Press, New York Times, or Mother Jones.
During 2025, I attended the FTC panel that led to this whole-of-government approach. Indeed, the phrase “whole-of-government approach” was spoken emphatically in the panel. So was the myth of suicide risk.
I was there to hear it all because a small percentage of readers support this project with premium subscriptions. If you are a free subscriber, consider an upgrade.
