Kaiser Bans Gender-Affirming Surgery For Minors. What's Next for Transgender Healthcare?

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 31 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kaiser Permanente will stop providing gender-affirming surgeries for patients under the age of 19, as a result of President Trump’s executive order targeting health centers that provide care for transgender youth. Providers across the nation have been scaling back on gender-affirming care, including Stanford Medicine and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, but Kaiser’s decision has shocked many providers and patients in the Bay Area. We talk with nurses, advocates, patients and specialists about what it means for them and the future of healthcare for gender-nonconforming minors. Guests: Michelle Jurkiewicz, licensed clinical psychologist and gender specialist Sydney Simpson, nurse, Kaiser Permanente S. Baum, correspondent, "Erin in the Morning" newsletter by Erin Reed Rhaetia Hanscum, teacher and member of the Bay Area Rainbow Families Action Group Will Lohf, San Francisco public high school student and activist Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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1:07.2	President Trump ran hundreds of millions of dollars worth of campaign ads attacking
1:11.7	transgender people, and as he campaigned, so he has governed, kicking trans people out of the military
1:17.5	and executing a multi-front pressure campaign on health care providers to stop care for trans young people.
1:24.5	In the latest development, Kaiser Permanente announced it will no longer provide
1:28.2	gender-affirming surgeries to minors. We'll talk with nurses, experts, patients, and families about
1:34.1	what the action means for them and the future of health care for gender non-conforming kids.
1:39.3	It's all coming up next right after this news.
1:53.7	Welcome to Forum.
1:55.2	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
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