The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is planning to end most medical treatments for gender dysphoria, officials announced March 17.
The announcement comes three days after NPR obtained an internal VA memo penned by Steven Lieberman, the department’s acting undersecretary for health, outlining the changes.
Five things to know:
1. Effective immediately, the department will stop offering hormone therapies to most veterans, along with items such as chest binders, surgical compression vests and wigs.
2. Outside of some exceptions for veterans already receiving such care from the VA, the department “will not provide any other medical or surgical therapy for gender dysphoria to any patients in any circumstance,” the VA said in a March 17 news release.
3. All savings from the termination of these services will be redirected to care for severely injured VA patients, including those who have been paralyzed or had limbs amputated.
4. The move is intended to ensure the VA complies with President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, which instructs agencies to “take all necessary steps, as permitted by law, to end the federal funding of gender ideology.”
5. Rep. Mark Takan, the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, criticized the VA’s decision to rescind a 2018 directive to provide care for transgender and intersex veterans in a March 15 statement, calling the decision “both shameful and cruel.”
“The Veterans Health Administration should be focused on supporting and providing quality healthcare to all our veterans, not furthering Republicans’ obsessive attacks on the rights, dignity and existence of the transgender community,” Mr. Takan said.
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