HHS: Hospitals used fraudulent coding for transgender procedures on minors

(The Center Square) – Medical watchdog Do No Harm along with other groups praised the Department of Health and Human Services’ report exposing fraudulent insurance coding practices for transgender procedures on minors that brought in financial gain equalling millions of dollars.

Do No Harm Chief Medical Officer Dr. Kurt Miceli told The Center Square: “This new report by HHS is an extraordinary breakthrough in our mission to protect American youth from the transgender industrial complex.”

“For years, activist physicians have funneled vulnerable children into the pipeline of irreversible sex-rejecting procedures – padding their pockets as they go,” Miceli said.

“They spurned scientific evidence, threw safeguards out the window, and in some instances appear to have engaged in fraudulent insurance coding to get paid,” Miceli said. 

“As we warned only a few months ago, gender ideologues are able to misuse medical diagnosis codes to avoid proper reporting and scrutiny and to enable potentially fraudulent billing practices,” Miceli said. “HHS's crackdown on these tactics will help protect vulnerable children, hold bad actors accountable, and restore integrity to healthcare."

Months before HHS’ published its report revealing alleged fraudulent coding for child sex-rejecting procedures, Do No Harm published its own report warning that healthcare providers may be misrepresenting child gender treatments as routine care, The Center Square reported.

Do No Harm said in its report that there are eight codes that may be used to misrepresent procedures: hypopituitarism; other primary ovarian failure; testicular hypofunction; precocious puberty;  other specified endocrine disorders; endocrine disorder, unspecified; hormone replacement therapy; and hypertrophy of breast. 

HHS’ report Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of “Gender Medicine” published this week cites Do No Harm research throughout. 

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HHS’ report stated that “financial incentives from the medical industry and lobby; political and ideological pressures; and failure of oversight at the local, state, and federal levels have all contributed to the rapid medicalization of these [sex-rejecting] procedures [on minors] and resulted in long-term physical and psychological consequences for many patients.”

HHS said in a news release that “approximately $50 million in insurance claims for puberty blockers billed using endocrine disorder diagnostic code E34.9 (Endocrine Disorder, Unspecified)” was identified in the report. 

Further, “nearly $11 million in claims for patients ages 13–17 were billed using a diagnosis code for precocious puberty E301.”

Over 225 hospitals and health systems nationwide “established pediatric gender programs,” HHS said.

Vice President JD Vance, chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. referred the hospitals to the Department of Justice and the HHS Office of Inspector General for further investigation.

Executive director Will Hild of consumer advocacy group Consumers’ Research told The Center Square: "As if child mutilation wasn't evil enough, it turns out the doctors and hospitals performing these procedures have been profiting off these horrific practices the entire time.” 

Executive Director of parents rights group American Parents Coalition Alleigh Marrè told The Center Square that “thanks to the work of the Trump Administration, hospitals and providers are being exposed for providing irreversible and harmful transgender interventions for kids, furthering the extent of this epidemic.”

“These medical institutions that fraudulently provided drugs to children must be held accountable,” Marré said.