NPR health reporter Selena Simmons-Duffin is a lesbian activist in the formerly taxpayer-funded news room. She's best known for puff pieces for trans activist Rachel Levine in Biden's Health and Human Services department. The crusade continued on Friday's Morning Edition under the headline "Doctors say Medicaid change to gender-affirming care will harm vulnerable youth."
It's conservatives vs. "doctors." That's not loaded at all.
The online summary was more specific: transgender-enabling doctors.
Federal Medicaid dollars can no longer pay for gender-affirming care for youth. Doctors who treat trans kids say it will harm vulnerable people.
"Harming vulnerable people" is the Republican position, according to "public radio."
The Trump position gets a sound bite from Dr. Mehmet Oz, leader of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services: "When the harms of sex-rejecting procedures are so serious, and the evidence is weak, the government cannot keep signing these checks." After a rebuttal from Georgetown law professor Katie Keith, Simmons-Duffin noted the Trump administration made a video titled "Wolves In White Coats," asserting doctors engaged in "gender-affirming care" have a profit motive.
NPR wasn't having that, engaging in their ritual habit of keeping leftists anonymous so they can make the Trump team and conservatives look extra evil. How much retribution could they dish out?
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: After all this came out, NPR spoke to the mother of a transgender teenager who's on Medicaid in California. She asked NPR not to use her voice on air because she fears her family could be targeted or her children could be taken away by the federal administration. She asked to be called by her initials, A.W.
She tells NPR the narrative about doctors driven by greed, forcing families to make decisions couldn't be further from her experience. She says her child's care has been slow and thoughtful, and the idea that doctors are driven by profit is, quote, "laughable because the population is so small." Lindsey Dawson makes the same point. She's director of LGBTQ health policy at the nonpartisan health policy organization KFF.
LINDSEY DAWSON: It's very unlikely that providers are engaging this work solely to generate revenue.
NPR noted that the blue states are rallying to make up the difference, like for Mama A.W, in California:
SIMMONS-DUFFIN But A.W. is still worried. She says, quote, "it's heartbreaking and devastating to have your child used as basically a political football," unquote. Jennifer Levi, senior attorney with GLAD Law, expects the rule to face legal challenges.
JENNIFER LEVI: This has to be seen in the broader context of this long ongoing attack on the transgender community.
SIMMONS-DUFFIN: So far, she says, the Trump administration has had a lot of losses on this issue in court, which may be why - in addition to making policy - the administration is also making videos. Selena Simmons-Duffin, NPR News.
This is how the Libertine Left fights. When taxpayers are forced to fund surgical amputations for children, it's only a "political football" when you oppose it. When you oppose the left, it's an "attack" on a whole "community." They wage a culture war on the "gender binary," but they don't call it a "culture war" until normal people resist.
