TALLAHASSEE, FLORIDA — Florida has become the first state in America to crack down on health insurance providers using taxpayer dollars to fund genital mutilation for gender-confused teens, according to a new report from the Daily Wire.
On Thursday, the DeSantis administration fined five healthcare insurers for violating the state’s prohibition on using Medicaid to fund sex-change operations and hormone disrupting drugs. The rule has been in place since August 2022.
“These plans recklessly continued to cover these services with permanent, harmful effects, after the rule was adopted,” Jason Weida, Secretary of the Agency for Healthcare Administration (AHCA), told Morning Wire. “[They] will not stand in the way of our fight to protect the innocence of Florida’s kids.”
Weida says Simply Healthcare used taxpayer funds to remove the breasts of a gender-confused 16-year-old girl. The company was hit with a $30,000 penalty and will be sanctioned as a result.
Weida declined to speculate as to why the insurers defied the rule, but said “they’re certainly going to be on notice now.” He added that the state may bring more significant penalties if any of the insurers are caught violating the policy again in the future.
“We take this issue really seriously,” Weida added. “We think that the protection of children is one of the most core functions of government here in Florida, and we’re going to do everything we can to protect children from these surgeries, which are really mutilating children across the country.”
