(LifeSiteNews) — A major spike in insurance claims for puberty-blocking drugs in Pennsylvania raised concerns that the billing system is being manipulated to skirt federal restrictions on transitioning minors, according to data obtained by the Daily Caller.
The Caller reported that no Pennsylvania children between ages 10-13 in 2012 had claims on puberty drugs for Central Precocious Puberty (CPP), a condition involving premature activation of the pituitary gland, as it usually afflicts children age 8 or younger. However, there were more than 220 claims under CPP’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) billing code, E30.1, from the beginning of 2013 to the end of 2024. Just from 2013 to 2017, reimbursements spiked more than 2,100 percent.
This has led many to suspect that the code’s expanded usage does not reflect a genuine rise in CPP cases but rather is being used to bill underage gender transitions under false pretenses to get around the Trump administration’s block on federal funding.
“The kids who are started on puberty blockers at age 11 and later are not generally treated for the diagnosis of precocious puberty but are more than likely trans kids who are purposely being mis-coded to hide this travesty,” pediatric endocrinologist and former American College of Pediatricians president Dr. Quentin Van Meter said. The age “would be an indication that this is not precocious puberty. You’re basically trying to block true puberty, which you shouldn’t do.”
“A spike of this magnitude in the diagnosis of precocious puberty – especially among children past the usual age – is highly atypical and raises the very real possibility that the diagnosis has been used as a billing workaround,” agreed Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director for Do No Harm. “The data indicates that the Department of Justice’s concerns merit serious investigation rather than being stalled in litigation.”
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has an ongoing investigation into Medicaid billing fraud for puberty blockers in Pennsylvania and several other states. Last November, a federal judge partially restricted one of DOJ’s subpoenas targeting the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. The case is ongoing.
A large body of evidence shows that “affirming” gender confusion carries serious harms, especially when done with impressionable children who lack the mental development, emotional maturity, and life experience to consider the long-term ramifications of the decisions being pushed on them, or full knowledge about the long-term effects of life-altering, physically transformative, and often-irreversible surgical and chemical procedures.
Studies find that more than 80 percent of children experiencing gender dysphoria outgrow it on their own by late adolescence, and that even full “reassignment” surgery often fails to resolve gender-confused individuals’ heightened tendency to engage in self-harm and suicide – and may even exacerbate it, including by reinforcing their confusion and neglecting the actual root causes of their mental strife.
Many oft-ignored detransitioners, individuals who attempted transitioning before regretting it and returning to life as their true sex, attest to the physical and mental harm of reinforcing gender confusion, as well as to the bias and negligence of the medical establishment on the subject, many of whom take an activist approach to their profession and begin cases with a predetermined conclusion that “transitioning” is the best solution.
“Gender-affirming” physicians have also been caught on video admitting to more old-fashioned motives for such procedures, as with a 2022 exposé about Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health, where Dr. Shayne Sebold Taylor said outright that “these surgeries make a lot of money.”