The hospital system, which is already being sued by Chloe Cole and other detransitioners, is currently facing investigations over false statements and fraudulent billing related to “gender-affirming” care.
[UPDATE] Kaiser Permanente will stop performing gender transition surgeries on patients under the age of19 beginning in August due to pressure from the Trump administration.
“As the legal and regulatory environment for gender-affirming care continues to evolve, we must carefully consider the significant risks being created for health systems, clinicians, and patients under the age of 19 seeking this care,” Kaiser Permanente told the Washington Times in a statement.
“After significant deliberation and consultation with internal and external experts including our physicians, we’ve made the difficult decision to pause surgical treatment for patients under the age of 19 in our hospitals and surgical centers.”
The announcement comes as children’s activist Chris Elston, known as Billboard Chris, released the contents of what was allegedly an email from Kaiser Permanente CEO Greg Adams to other executives, in which he said that pressure from the Trump administration led to the change.
Adams specifically noted Trump’s executive order, which is aimed at halting the surgical mutilation of children, as well as inquiries made to hospitals by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and regulatory changes such as by the Federal Trade Commission.
The Trump administration is also working to halt fraud, as some doctors and hospitals have allegedly used fraudulent billing codes when performing gender transition procedures to hide the procedures and get insurance companies to pay for them.
Adams also cited the most recent action in which the Department of Justice issued subpoenas to doctors and hospitals who provided gender transition treatments to minors and may have used fraudulent billing codes.
The change will take place officially on August 29
Kaiser Permanente will continue to provide all other “gender-affirming care,” likely including puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Kaiser Permanente is currently embroiled in lawsuits from former patients who as minors were subjected to gender transition surgeries but have since detransitioned. The suits claim that the hospitals failed to address the minors’ other underlying mental health issues and did not inform the patients or their parents of the possible risks of gender transition surgeries and treatments.
Chloe Cole, who filed the first-ever lawsuit by a detransitioner against a hospital system, filed suit against Kaiser Permanente in February 2023 after its doctors started her on gender transition treatments when she was 13 years old and performed a double mastectomy at 15 years old.
Cole has since become the most well-known detransitioner speaking out against gender transition treatments. She responded to the news that Kaiser would pause treatments on gender-confused children on X, saying, “Kaiser Permanente, the gender clinic that destroyed my childhood, has confirmed they will be HALTING transgender surgeries for patients under the age of 19 nationwide, effective next month! This is only a pause, according to internal emails, but these incremental wins must be celebrated! We are winning! Thank you to the Trump administration for protecting kids!!!”
Kaiser is just the latest healthcare organization to halt all of some of its “gender-affirming” treatments under pressure from the Trump administration. A growing number of other hospitals and gender clinics have also announced that they will no longer provide surgeries, puberty blockers, or cross-sex hormones to those under the age of 19, among them Children’s National Hospital in Washington D.C., Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles, Penn State Health, and the University of Utah Health System.
ORIGINAL STORY
{Published on February 27, 2023} Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old woman who once identified as a boy but has since detransitioned, has filed a first of its kind lawsuit against the hospital and medical group that provided her gender transitioning treatment while she was a minor.
Cole, who is represented by Dhillon Law Group, LiMandri & Jonna LLP, and the Center for American Liberty, notified Permanente Medical Group, Kaiser Foundation Health Plan & Kaiser Foundation Hospitals of Cole’s intent to file a lawsuit last year, but after they did not respond for 90 days, the lawsuit went forward. The complaint reads:
“This case is about a team of doctors (i.e., the Defendants) who decided to perform a mutilating, mimicry sex change experiment on Chloe, then a thirteen-year-old vulnerable girl struggling with complex mental health co-morbidities, who needed love, care, attention, and regular weekly psychotherapy, not cross-sex hormones and mutilating surgery.”
The complaint states that as a child and adolescent, Cole suffered from “a complex, multi-faceted array of mental health symptoms,” including depression, social and generalized anxiety, an eating disorder, and autism. It claims that she began believing that she was a boy after being exposed to online transgender influencers. When she told her parents, they were unsure what to do and sought help from the Defendants.
The suit claims that the defendants affirmed the then-13 year old’s “self-diagnosed gender dysphoria” without considering her co-morbid mental health struggles nor the events leading her to this conclusion. The suit states,
“Defendants assumed that Chloe, a thirteen-year-old emotionally troubled girl, knew best what she needed to improve her mental health and handed her the prescription pad. They quickly put her on the puberty blockers and hormones ‘conveyer belt’ of mimicry sex change. There is no other area of medicine where doctors will surgically remove a perfectly healthy body part and intentionally induce a diseased state of pituitary gland function based simply on the patient’s wishes. Thus, they abetted her erroneous notion that she could change her sex.”
The complaint also says that the Defendants also never informed Cole or her parents of the possible problems that could arise from gender-affirming treatment nor did they disclose that nearly all children with gender dysphoria later accept their biological sex or offer another treatment.
Cole’s parents were told that she was at a high risk of suicide and the gender dysphoria would never improve without gender-affirming treatment. Her parents were challenged with the question: “Would you rather have a dead daughter, or a live son?”
Cole did not have suicidal ideations before receiving gender-affirming treatment, but as treatment continued, her mental health problems grew worse. After having a double mastectomy at 15 years old, she began to have suicidal ideations.
The complaint concluded:
“Defendants grossly breached the standard of care by pushing Chloe into this harmful experimental treatment regimen without a proper period of psychological evaluation, without evaluating and treating her serious co-morbidities, without providing informed consent, and while actively utilizing emotionally super-charged and false information to derail the rational decision-making process of Chloe and her parents. Defendants were not ‘caring’ for Chloe, they were experimenting on her, and doing so all to their own great financial benefit.”
At a press conference in front of the Kaiser Gender Pathways Clinic in Oakland, California, Cole and Harmeet K. Dhillon, attorney and CEO of the Center for American Liberty spoke about the “Mengele-style experiments” being implemented.
Dhillon said, “Chloe’s family sought medical treatment for her at Kaiser. Her physicians and other medical professionals violated the first norm of the profession, the Hippocratic Oath, when, instead of caring for her and providing medically competent diagnoses and treatment, they permanently disfigured her for profit.”
Cole proclaimed, “I was 15 when you cut into my body, ripped out my breasts and stitched me back up like I was your rag doll. You are on the wrong side of history and will always be remembered as child butchers.”
In a statement, Cole further explained,
“My teenage life has been the culmination of excruciating pain, regret, and most importantly injustice. I have been emotionally and physically damaged and stunted by so-called medical professionals in my most important developmental period. I was butchered by an institution that we trust more than anything else in our lives. What is worse is that I am not alone in my pain. I will see to the fact that the blood and tears of detransitioners like myself will not lay waste. It is impossible for me to recoup what I have lost, but I will insure no children will be harmed at the hands of these liars and mutilators.”
Today’s youth are experiencing a social-media fueled social contagion and identity crisis: A recent Gallup poll of 10,000 people found that 19.7 percent of Gen Z is LGBT, while only 3.3 percent of Generation X and 2.7 percent of Baby Boomers are LGBT. While only a relatively small percentage of Gen Z is transgender, that number is nearly double the number of millennials who are transgender and over six times higher than Generation X.
What that tells us is that transgenderism and the LGBT lifestyle is a growing pathology affecting young people and it is being perpetuated by culture, media, and the medical community.
Tragically, the medical community has abandoned its own ethical standards and is now profiting off of vulnerable children by giving them off-label medication therapies and performing grotesque surgeries on their healthy bodies.
Cole’s story should have never happened. But not only did it happen, it’s happening to others. Thousands of others.
One of those is Brian Wagoner, a man who once believed he was a woman. He began undergoing hormone treatments after a therapist insisted that he was a woman trapped in a man’s body.
“My problems got worse. I added new problems. I feel like the therapist that I went to see was an activist that happened to practice therapy, too,” Wagoner said. “I thank God every day of my life that I never had any plastic surgery. I took hormones, and it messed me up. My story is real, my pain is real.”
Wagoner said he realized he needed to cease the treatment after he became sober. “It was like leaving the twilight zone. I feel like I’ve been harmed by this, and I wish that — I don’t want anyone else to experience what I experienced. So, I’m out of the twilight zone and, you know, I’m a very happy and successful man. You know, I hope that my experience helps somebody.”
In nearly every case of a person experiencing issues with gender dysphoria or sexual confusion, they have had other mental health problems. Many have experienced some type of trauma, but rather than address the issues, medical professionals are diagnosing them with gender dysphoria and putting them on a path of misery.
Just as bad, the federal government and many states are incentivizing this medical malpractice, not only by verbally and financially encouraging it but also by punishing providers and therapists who push back and try to treat gender dysphoria patients with long-proven treatment protocols.
One thing is for certain: Gender-affirming treatment doesn’t help. Wagoner said that he felt like he was “collateral damage for a movement.” That’s because he was.
The Bible tells us however that there is help for all our hurts, whether that be the identity crisis and mental health problems many young people experience or the post-treatment pain these detransitioners now feel.
Psalm 147:2-3 says,
“The Lord builds up Jerusalem;
he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted
and binds up their wounds.”
So many young people today are looking for help and hope, but they are looking for it in all the wrong places. Life, light, and truth is found in Jesus Christ. God know our hurts and in His Son there is healing. That doesn’t mean there won’t be any thorns in the flesh, and it doesn’t mean that Christians shouldn’t advocate for mental health treatment. What it does mean is that we know that Jesus is the solution and the source of healing, and His Word should guide us in supporting young people and should also guide our medical professionals.
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