The number of transgender surgeries nearly tripled in the U.S. starting in 2018 after the Obama administration forced health insurance companies to cover the costs and doctors and hospitals rushed in to reap the rewards of the expensive procedures, a study finds.
The “National Estimates of Gender-Affirming Surgery in the US” study by Columbia University published in August by JAMA finds that transgender-affirming surgeries soared from 4,550 in 2016 to 13,000 by 2019.
“Consistent with prior studies, we identified a remarkable increase in the number” of procedures, study author Dr. Jason Wright wrote.
“These findings suggest that the number of procedures performed in the US has increased dramatically, nearly tripling from 2016 to 2019,” Wright added.
The numbers then doubled twice more between 2000 and 2005 and from 2006 to 2011.
Wright said that the steep rise in the number of surgeries “is likely due in part to federal and state laws requiring coverage of transition-related care.”
The Obama administration first announced in 2014 an end to the 33-year ban on Medicare coverage of transgender care. Then, in 2018, Obamacare extended that policy and forced insurance companies to cover all trans surgeries.
The study also found that the number of patients seeking care for “gender identity disorder” rose from 12,855 in 2016 to 38,470 in 2020.
The study compiled data from two national surgery databases, and the authors looked at both in-patient and out-patient data.
More than half the patients were between the ages of 19 and 30, 22 percent were ages 31 to 40, and eight percent were among patients ages 12 to 18.
The majority of the younger patients, some 3,000 of them, were girls who had their breasts removed, the study found. The number of surgeries on genitals increased with older patients.
In addition, fifteen percent, representing 48,000 patients, appeared to indicate they suffered mental health or substance abuse problems.
The study did not look at suicide rates, but a PLOS ONE study from 2011 that researched transgender surgery patients in Sweden found that transgender patients were 4.9 times more likely to attempt suicide and 19.1 times more likely to die of suicide.
“Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population,” the study found. “Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.”
Another recent report found that the U.S. is an outlier among Western nations in its headlong rush to push gender reassignment surgery and other dangerous medical procedures, especially on children, and that European countries — where many of the procedures originated — are beginning to pull back from blanket acceptance of transgender procedures.
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