Medicaid Spent $118 Million On Gender-Transition Drugs and Surgeries For Minors From 2019 to 2023, CBO Finds
A new study found somewhat lower use of cross-sex hormones among teens on Medicaid than in a previous study about privately insured youth but a higher rate of surgery than a previous Harvard study.
Medicaid spent over $100 million dollars on gender-transition treatments for minors from 2019 to 2023, according to a new analysis conducted by the Congressional Budget Office. The analysis indicated that a much larger proportion of minors took cross-sex hormones than took puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria during this period. And yet the high cost of blockers meant that Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income Americans, spent over 20 times more money on those drugs than on cross-sex hormones for minors.
The analysis, which was published in a research letter in JAMA Pediatrics on Monday, reached strikingly similar conclusions about the age and natal-sex breakdown of the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones by minors compared with a 2025 paper examining the use of such medications by privately insured minors. The youth on Medicaid used these drugs at a somewhat lower rate overall compared with the privately insured youth, however.
Among …
