Equality Caucus Condemns House Committee for Advancing Bill to Attack Gender Affirming Care

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, the Congressional Equality Caucus released the following statement condemning the House Energy and Commerce Committee for passing H.R. 3887, the Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act of 2023, out of committee.

"Extreme MAGA Republicans are continuing their assault on LGBTQI+ people by trying to force children's hospitals to choose between receiving funding to train pediatricians and providing gender-affirming care to transgender youth. This is wrong," said Equality Caucus Chair Mark Pocan (WI-02). "The Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education Program has historically had strong bipartisan support. Republicans could easily support the health and wellbeing of children across the country by passing a clean reauthorization of this program into law, but instead they are cruelly holding this reauthorization hostage in order to restrict access to evidence-based care for trans youth."

"What my Republican colleagues did today undermines the rights and responsibilities of parents and health care professionals, endangers some of the most vulnerable youth in our society and politicizes what should be a strong bipartisan bill to promote public health," said Equality Caucus Co-Chair and Energy and Commerce Committee member Angie Craig (MN-02). "This Republican bill allows politicians to mandate which children are able to receive the health care they need – that is unacceptable. We all agree that everyone deserves to be treated with love and respect. That must include trans youth."

Established in 1999, the Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education program provides financial support to free-standing children's hospitals to train medical residents and fellows. The program provided financial support to more than 13,000 medical residents and fellows in the 2019-2020 academic year, and in general, the GME program supports the training of nearly half of all general pediatricians and more than half of all pediatric subspecialists.

The program was most recently reauthorized in 2018; in 2018, the House passed H.R. 5385, the "Dr. Benjy Frances Brooks Children's Hospital GME Support Reauthorization Act of 2018" by voice vote, and the Senate passed H.R. 5385 by unanimous consent. The bill extended the program's authorizations until fiscal year 2023 and increased the amount authorized without substantive changes to the program.

H.R. 3887 reauthorizes the GME program but prohibits children's hospitals that have provided gender-affirming care to people under 18 in the previous fiscal year from receiving payments under the program. The bill also explicitly allows hospitals to continue to provide coercive and medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex infants and children.

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