Ron DeSantis Likely Breaking The Law With Latest Health Order

Florida's Republican-controlled government, led by Ron DeSantis, issued a directive last week that will cut off transgender therapies from Medicaid funds, alleging that these treatments are "under researched and ineffective." That statement alone is patently false, but the directive itself is likely a violation of the Affordable Care Act's anti-discrimination clause. Farron Cousins explains what's going on.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

The state of Florida has decided to become as cruel as humanly possible to transgender individuals living in this state. And they have now ordered the state health departments to no longer provide gender affirming care to Medicaid recipients. Now, right now, this applies to youth Medicaid recipients, even though Medicaid does in fact cover these things. The Medicaid funds due to the expansion of the affordable care act are actually coming from the federal government. So this is not in any way hurting the state of Florida for this to happen. So Ron DeSantis, who had his quack of a surgeon general, Joseph Lao go out there and make this directive is doing it solely to be cruel. This is not a cost saving measure.

It's just to further target these individuals. Now the agency for healthcare administration here in the state of Florida released a report and in their report, they said that these gender affirming cares that include hormone replacement therapy, puberty, blockers, and surgeries are quote under researched and ineffective at treating gender dysphoria. That is a flat out lie. That is 100% a lie. And that, you know, is a lie according to the American medical association and the American psychiatric association. So the top medical and the type top psychiatric associations in the United States have said that these things are lies, but here's where things get a little tricky for Ron DeSantis, discriminating against individuals who receive Medicaid, discriminating care for them, I should say is actually a violation of the affordable care acts, uh, non-discrimination clause. So on discrimination clause. So it is a direct violation of a federal law. Yikes, that sounds pretty bad. Sounds like the kind of thing that should be investigated possibly even prosecuted, right? I mean, you violate a federal law. You should be arrested. That's that's how justice is supposed to work in this country. But here we have this authoritarian administration here in the state of Florida doing this. This is not a proposal. It's the directive. They have already told them you can't pay for gender reform, affirming care for these people anymore. That's discrimination. It is 100% discrimination because there is not a scientific basis for it. Therefore they

Are currently at least as far as I can tell in violation of the non-discriminatory clause of the affordable care act. So where the hell are the authorities? Where's the investigators. Where's the lawyers. Where is everybody? This administration here in this state intentionally tries to be as cruel as humanly possible. At this point, I'm thinking they've got some kind of sadistic, you know, uh, fixation, you know, almost to a, you know, what I'm getting at. I don't even want to say it, but that's how I feel. This administration acts towards people. They get off on the cruelty. And I hope in this particular instance, the hammer of the law comes down hard against them, cuz it is very difficult to slice this as anything other than clear discrimination in violation of a federal law.