JD Vance calls on DOJ to prosecute alleged fraud in teen transgender treatment

FIRST ON FOX: Vice President JD Vance is calling for the Department of Justice to investigate a bombshell Health and Human Services (HHS) report alleging some hospitals and healthcare providers fraudulently subjected children to lucrative sex-change procedures.

The new report, titled: "Wolves in White Coats: How Doctors and Hospitals Pushed and Profited from the Fraud of 'Gender Medicine,'" revealed more than $60 million in insurance claims for treatments including puberty blockers for adolescents as young as 13 billed from 2015 to 2025.

According to HHS, some providers aggressively treated children who presented with hormonal issues, endocrine system problems, or early onset puberty with transgender care, billing insurance companies.

HHS also blamed Biden-era policies promoting transgender treatments for expanding access gender surgery coverage.

MEDICAID ENDS FUNDING FOR CHILD SEX-CHANGE PROCEDURES AS TRUMP ADMIN SLAMS 'EXPERIMENTAL' TREATMENTS Fox News Digital obtained a letter from Vance to Attorney General Todd Blanche which detailed Vance’s concerns surrounding the report, and called for criminal prosecution of anyone who has intentionally misled children to get transgender treatment.

"One study showed that only about 4.7 percent of patients diagnosed with "endocrine disorder, unspecified," had that actual condition," Vance wrote in the letter to Blanche.

"Another notes a 30 percent increase in the number of endocrine disorder diagnoses, despite it being unlikely that that there has been a substantial increase in pediatric endocrine disorders." The average healthcare cost for a minor is roughly $3,000, but transgender treatments can push that to $75,000 without surgery and nearly $170,000, if surgery is involved, according to the report.

The report also details how some healthcare providers profit from life-long medical costs, including prescriptions, surgeries and medical interventions years after a minor reaches adulthood.

About 225 hospitals and health systems across the country have established pediatric gender programs.

Vance charged in his letter to Blanche that health care providers knowingly pushed their misdiagnoses to insurance companies, using billing codes to compel coverage.

VANCE REFERS TIM WALZ, MINNESOTA ATTORNEY GENERAL TO DOJ FOR CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION OVER STATE'S ALLEGED FRAUD "When providers miscode treatment in order to secure insurance coverage for gender-transitioning interventions that insurance would not otherwise cover, they should be held accountable," read Vance’s letter.