Could Medical Insurance Premiums Save Teens from Being Victimized by Politicized Medicine?
Editor’s note: The following piece originally appeared at The Federalist.
A recent article pointed out that soaring malpractice insurance premiums for clinics that provide puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical procedures to minors are becoming an obstacle to those who profit from inflicting irreparable harm on struggling adolescents under the misleading name of “gender-affirming care.” This is welcome news to those of us old enough to remember a time when passing a high school anatomy class required mastering the concept that men are post-pubescent homo sapiens with XY chromosomes and women are those with XX chromosomes.
Since 1776, when Adam Smith first introduced the “invisible hand” of economics in his Wealth of Nations, generation after generation has witnessed its effect on human behavior. If basic biology, the Hippocratic oath, or the theological and natural law viewpoint of mankind as image-bearers of God won’t put an end to doctors compounding the suffering of vulnerable teens by turning them into life-long patients, perhaps economic self-interest will.
Insurers don’t make malpractice premium decisions in a vacuum. Nations in Western Europe and Scandinavia that were once at the forefront of so-called “gender transitions” have severely restricted the practice for minors. Here in the U.S., state lawmakers have begun passing legislation to protect minors from irreversible, life-altering procedures until legal adulthood, despite opposition from the federal government. Attorneys at Alliance Defending Freedom are assisting the state of Alabama in defending its commonsense restrictions on these harmful procedures and won a victory at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit last year.
Some states like Arkansas have lengthened the statute of limitations on malpractice suits related to these practices. Attorneys representing de-transitioners have filed suit in multiple states against clinics and therapists, some of whom started these young people in the process after as little as one consultation. As the malpractice litigation continues and the legislatures act, the insurers take notice. It is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in our nation when dollars and cents drive decisions with such immense consequences; but if driven to heal instead of harm, so be it. Young people with long lives ahead of them will benefit.
No one can blame desperate parents seeking to alleviate their child’s suffering from being convinced there is only one option, no matter how radical it might seem — especially if the parents have been deceived by the lie that they must choose between a living transgender-identified son or a dead daughter.
To say adolescence is a difficult phase of life is like saying the universe is big. If I had a dollar for every person I know who enjoyed going through puberty, never felt uncomfortable in his or her body, and always felt confident and accepted by peers, I would be bankrupt. Teens today face the same prospect of navigating the hormone-induced minefield as every previous generation, but with the added weight of social media, cultural influencers, and the medical establishment telling them there’s a way out instead of a way through by stopping the natural physical maturation process and surgically altering their bodies to better align with how they feel. It’s heartbreaking to hear the stories of these kids, who realized too late that what they actually needed was compassionate counseling to become comfortable with their bodies.
Aldous Huxley is often given credit for the observation that “technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.” When it comes to humanity employing technology to anoint ourselves as the arbiter of biology, creators of “new” men and women, we have gone as far back as possible — to Eden, where the serpent hissed his temptation to Eve, “You will be like God.”
Evidence that we are living in Huxley’s Brave New World continues to emerge with each passing day. Unfortunately, it seems that many have read the dystopian novels of Huxley and Orwell not as cautionary tales to be heeded but as instruction manuals to be followed.
Yet there is still hope.
As more and more brave young people victimized by politicized medicine, junk science, and our cultural god complex seek restitution from the adults who should have known better, the invisible hand of economics is coming to their aid and might just be the factor that slows the spread of our nation’s tragic self-inflicted wound.
