OKPOLICY.ORG
Senate Bill 904, a carryover bill from 2025 that started as amendments to an incentive reimbursement program for long-term care facilities, was plucked from obscurity recently, gutted, and turned into a bill denying Medicaid (SoonerCare) coverage “for any gender transition procedures, regardless of whether the procedures are provided to a minor or an adult.” The bill passed the Senate on March 25 and the House last Wednesday. It’s headed to the governor to certainly become law.
As defined in the bill, gender transition procedures include drugs and hormones “to affirm an individual’s perception of his or her gender or biological sex, if that perception is inconsistent with the individual’s biological sex.”
I have to say, I simply do not understand the obsession with singling out transgender Oklahomans and denying them treatments they need and would otherwise qualify to receive under Medicaid.
Reasonable people might disagree on whether to limit certain treatments for children. But many of the strongest proponents of those limits also champion “parental rights” and “parental choice” in other areas of children’s lives. In my view, this sensitive, confusing, and often life-threatening circumstance is one in which caring parents should have more influence than the state.
According to the Williams Institute, about 1% of the U.S. population identifies as transgender, which would equate to just under 40,000 Oklahomans. I have never had a close relationship with a transgender person or their family, but I can only imagine the emotional trauma they endure while trying to reconcile mind and body to find a life they were meant to live.
It’s likely that many Oklahomans have been able to find that life with the help of treatments that are available and qualify as medically necessary to sustain their life and health. It’s also likely that many of them, being part of a small minority that is unacceptable to many, are not in a financial position to pay for the treatments they need without help through Medicaid.
Many Oklahomans are born with conditions, both physical and mental, that require regular, lifelong treatment to sustain their health and life, and many get that treatment from Medicaid. Gender transition treatments should be no different.
I understand internal legislative politics and elective politics, but denying a tiny minority the life-saving help they need for the sake of either is, in my opinion, a bridge too far. Passage of SB 904 was not Oklahoma’s finest hour.
