Sutter Health’s Trans Youth Care Hasn’t Stopped, Parents Say, but Trump Wants a Ban

After families were informed last month that Sutter Health planned to join a growing list of health care providers limiting gender-affirming care for minors, some say the Northern California-based network is reversing course, despite mounting pressure from the federal government.

But the temporary reprieve is shaky, according to East Bay mother Nikki, whose 14-year-old son relies on a Sutter doctor for frequent, steady care. The Trump administration on Thursday announced funding restrictions that could effectively halt all pediatric gender-affirming care, and Nikki worries the move could push Sutter to backtrack — and make it nearly impossible to find a provider.

“I’m trying really hard to hold on to the victory of this last week and a half or so that this care has not stopped,” she told KQED. “But that unforeseeable future weighs heavily on my husband and I. We do our best to shelter our children, but this is the world intruding upon our lives and the government trying to make decisions for us.”

In November, Nikki, who asked to be identified by only her first name for fear of retribution against her and her son’s caregiver, was informed that his care would be discontinued just weeks later, on Dec. 10. Several other families with transgender children said their doctors had relayed similar messages.

But last week, according to Nikki, her son’s doctor said the hospital network appeared to reverse course and would no longer stop offering treatments on that date.

In a statement, Sutter said it was working to ensure compliance with recent federal actions affecting gender-affirming care for patients under 19.

“Sutter-aligned physicians are engaging directly with their patients to have open and thoughtful conversations and to determine individual care plans that will meet anticipated requirements,” the nonprofit hospital network said, adding that gender-affirming surgeries for young patients had previously ceased. “We continue to support careful, patient-centered discussions with appropriate resources and guidance.”

Nikki said she’s still waiting for her son’s future appointments to be rescheduled after they were canceled last month, but she’s heard from other families that they’ve been able to get back on their caregivers’ calendars.

Still, she said, the last few weeks have been extremely nerve-wracking as she and other families awaited pending federal policy moves that would essentially ban gender-affirming care for youth, even in states where it’s legal.

That came Thursday morning, when Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced two new rules.

The first would prevent hospitals and doctors from receiving Medicaid reimbursements for gender-affirming care for children. Medicaid offers health coverage to millions of low-income Americans. The second would go further, blocking all funding from Medicaid and Medicare, which covers older people and those with disabilities, for medical centers that provide gender-affirming care to youth.

Hospitals rely heavily on Medicaid and Medicare funding to operate — combined, the two federal programs covered about 45% of spending on hospital care in 2023, according to the health policy research organization KFF.

The proposed rules have to go through a 60-day period during which the public can weigh in, and they are likely to face legal challenges; the American Civil Liberties Union has already said it plans to sue.

If they’re finalized, though, Nikki worries that it will become nearly impossible to find a doctor who offers the care her son needs.

“Then what am I going to do to find a physician? Who are those physicians?” Nikki asked.

That’s because other major networks have already moved to limit gender-affirming care in light of the Trump administration’s crackdown. In June, Stanford Medicine paused gender-affirming surgeries and stopped providing prescriptions for puberty blockers to young people, and Kaiser Permanente halted surgical care in July.

Nikki called the president’s efforts to withhold funding from caregivers who provide gender affirming care “financial sabotage.”

“It’s terrifying,” she said. “It feels completely helpless and hopeless.”

She’s been searching for a new provider who doesn’t rely on federal funding since the initial word last month from her Sutter doctor, but she hasn’t found one yet. The threat that her son’s care could be stopped with just days or weeks of notice is especially worrisome, she said, because of how time sensitive it is.

He takes a weekly testosterone shot, which has to be picked up one dose at a time, and re-prescribed every six months, due to their insurance coverage.

Right now, he’s out of refills. He’s still within his normal dose cycle, Nikki said, but if he’s unable to get a new prescription within days and falls behind, the effects will be pretty immediately noticeable.

While she thinks he’ll be able to see his Sutter caregiver for a prescription this time, if that option goes away in the future, “I’m, for lack of a word, shit out of luck,” Nikki said.

KQED’s Natalia Navarro contributed to this report.