Panelists of the HJ25 session \u201cBeyond bans: Barriers to health care access for transgender people\u201d answer questions. From left to right: Adam Rhodes, Rose Broderick, Henry Carnell and Tre\u2019vell Anderson. Photo by Zachary Linhares<\/p>\n
Beyond bans: Barriers to health care access for transgender people<\/strong><\/p>\n By Nicole Ortiz, New York Health Journalism Fellow<\/strong><\/p>\n The science behind the necessity of gender-affirming care<\/a> has already been established, but that hasn\u2019t stopped states from instituting bans<\/a> on providing care for youths.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s an area of health care rife with barriers, from misinformation released at the federal level to the intersectionality overlap of identifiers such as economic status, race, immigration status and neurodivergence.\u00a0<\/p>\n All members of the \u201cBeyond bans: Barriers to health care access for transgender people\u201d panel at Health Journalism 2025<\/a> pointed to the Trump administration\u2019s new \u201cBig Beautiful Bill<\/a>\u201d and a recently released Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) gender dysphoria report as examples of where mainstream reporting has fallen short.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing journalists just blindly repeating things without fact-checking,\u201d Tre\u2019vell Anderson, co-executive director of the Trans Journalists Association, said during the May 31 panel. \u201cThe reality is, there are these very clear, explicit political intentions behind all of this.\u201d<\/p>\n For instance, Henry Carnell, digital\/climate fellow at Mother Jones, pointed out that the HHS report was published after only three months of research without any authors named<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt is, frankly, a little bit embarrassing that people are reporting uncritically on that sort of report,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n When covering transgender care, he continued, context is often missing and reporting isn\u2019t handled the way it would be for other stories not relating to gender-affirming care.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so much reporting about the evidence quality of trans health care,\u201d he said, \u201cbut the proper context is that it\u2019s really no different than the evidence quality of a lot of other health treatments out there, especially treatments used on youth.\u201d<\/p>\n Further, Anderson noted, \u201call kinds of care are gender-affirming,\u201d including IUD insertions and gynecomastia surgery.<\/p>\n And while these bans are currently focused on gender-affirming care for youths, they are a \u201cmere stepping stone\u201d for attacks against transgender adults, Adam Rhodes, training director at Investigative Reporters and Editors, said. For example, according to The Human Rights Campaign<\/a>, several states don\u2019t allow public funds to be used for transgender health care \u2014 cutting off critical services for trans public sector employees, those on Medicaid and people who are incarcerated<\/a>.<\/p>\n Beyond federal limitations, it\u2019s not exactly easy for trans people to go to the doctor \u2014 even for trans people with insurance that covers gender-affirming care. The risks range from a provider potentially putting a patient in danger by outing them after using their legal name instead of their preferred name to chalking up any and all medical issues to being related to a patient\u2019s hormone replacement therapy.<\/p>\n\n
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