Dr Mehmet Oz, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid, has warned against seeking gender-affirming care on price grounds, claiming it can cost as much as $150,000 to create a new penis.
Speaking at a Department of Health and Human Services event on Thursday at which the administration unveiled a series of regulatory actions designed to effectively block access to gender-affirming care for minors, the former TV personality claimed that LGBT+ ideology was harmful to children.
“We’re not gonna let taxpayer money go to hurt these children, and no children will no longer be hurt by this ideology,” Dr Oz said.
“We know that inflicting these procedures on young people costs them and the Medicaid system countless dollars, not just in medical bills, but all kinds of downstream issues, while providers reap the rewards.”
He then cited a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association three years ago to argue that such treatment is costly.
“According to 2022 JAMA data – so it’s very recent – the typical vaginoplasty, a vaginoplasty, a procedure a child does not need, costs $60,000,” he said.
“Shockingly, a phalloplasty – the creation of a penis – costs, on average in America, according to this data, high-quality, $150,000 per child.
“I do believe with doing some work that these prices have continued to increase with increasing manufactured demand. And I must point out that the creation of a vagina in that case of a phalloplasty or a scrotoplasty where you add testicles, that’s extra.”
“This is a pathology that has afflicted the medical profession. It is shameful that clinicians have profiteered off this. I do not understand how it could possibly have been tolerated by the leadership of these institutions, but it will no longer be funded,” he continued.
The Gender Confirmation Center puts the cost of a phalloplasty at between $35,000 and $50,000 and the price of a vaginoplasty between $23,000 and $24,500, well short of Dr Oz’s figures.
The Singapore-based gender clinic GenderGP offers a similar estimate, placing the cost of a phalloplasty in the U.S. at between $23,255 and $39,160, “making it one of the more expensive destinations to choose for surgery.”
However, the clinic does add that “more extensive procedures” can climb to $158,795 “when including all stages and if there are any complications experienced.”
For comparison, the same procedure can cost as little as $2,673 in Thailand and $3,743 in Turkey, according to GenderGP.
Such treatment is “extremely rare for patients under 18 to receive genital surgery,” Transhealthcare.org notes. At the same time, both the Gender Confirmation Center and the Boston Children’s Hospital Center say phalloplasties and vaginoplasties are not recommended to transgender children under eighteen years of age.
President Donald Trump has taken a strongly anti-trans position in his second term, claiming that opposition Democrats want “transgender for everybody.”
Thursday’s announcement by his HHS included a plan to cut off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding to hospitals that provide pediatric gender-affirming care and to prevent federal Medicaid funds from being spent on such procedures.
“So-called gender affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people,” Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr said at the event. “This is not medicine. It is malpractice.”
Dr Susan J Kressly, President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, was quick to hit back, responding: “These policies and proposals misconstrue the current medical consensus and fail to reflect the realities of pediatric care and the needs of children and families.
“These rules are a baseless intrusion into the patient-physician relationship. Patients, their families, and their physicians – not politicians or government officials – should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them.”
