Taxpayers in Pennsylvania continue to pay for transgender procedures on children despite actions from the Trump administration to protect them from the life-altering procedures, according to government data shared with The Daily Wire.
Pennsylvania funding for the procedures has continued to surge, even with President Donald Trump’s executive actions to cut funding for entities that promote the procedures on kids. From January to September 18, 2025, Pennsylvania has shelled out nearly $3 million in funding for the procedures, according to data obtained by the Pennsylvania Family Institute.
The spending numbers come from “Right to Know” requests filed with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services by Dan Bartkowiak, the chief strategy officer at the Pennsylvania Family Institute. He said that there should be a drop in funding due to the Trump administration’s actions.
“So are other entities doing this? Will we see the drop?” he said. “The assumption would be, it’s going to be less than last year’s total.”
In 2015, Pennsylvania’s spending on “sex reassignment and transition-related services and drugs” for children and young adults surged from $74,000 per year to over $5 million in 2024. In total, the commonwealth has spent over $31 million on transgender procedures on 6,229 patients between the ages of 5 and 18 since 2015.
Despite increasing backlash from lawmakers and parents about the dangers of the procedures, the spending hasn’t appeared to slow down.
How young were the patients? According to the data, there were 133 children last year between the ages of 6 and 12 who received transgender procedures.
PA Family Institute.
One of the hospitals that has performed transgender procedures on kids, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, is currently fighting the Trump administration’s efforts to gain data on the use of puberty blockers. They sued to block the Justice Department’s efforts to investigate the hospital.
From January until September 18, $2,925,736 in Pennsylvania Medical Assistance has gone toward the procedures through the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), fee-for-service claims, physical health paid encounters, and behavioral health paid encounters, according to the data.
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Bartkowiak flagged the increasing amount of CHIP funds going toward the procedures, rising from just over $15,000 in 2015 to over $1,114,367 in 2024. Already over $487,00 in CHIP funding has been spent on the procedures. CHIP is Pennsylvania’s program for uninsured kids and teenagers who aren’t eligible for Medicaid.
The Pennsylvania Department of Health and Human Services told The Daily Wire that it is “required to follow all applicable federal and state Medicaid rules and covers services related to gender transition that otherwise fall within a beneficiary’s scope of covered Medicaid benefits, such as physician’s services, inpatient and outpatient hospital services, behavioral health services, and prescribed drugs when medically necessary.”
It added that relies on the guidance from the radical World Professional Association for Transgender Health “in determining medical necessity for gender-affirming health care services.”
Senator Judy Ward, a Pennsylvania Republican, is attempting to stop taxpayer funding of the procedures and protect kids from gender surgeries, cross-sex hormones, and puberty blockers. In June, she introduced the “Do No Harm Act” to shield kids from the procedures.
“It’s just a horrible, horrible thing, and we’re doing it to children,” Ward told The Daily Wire of the transgender procedures. “It is child abuse [in] every sense of the word.”
Ward did not believe that Democrat Governor Josh Shapiro would sign the legislation if it passed the Republican-controlled Senate and managed to get across the finish line in the Democrat-run House. Under Shapiro, $14 million has been spent on the procedures. Shapiro did not respond to a request for whether he would sign Ward’s legislation.
She said that more awareness is needed to make Pennsylvanians aware of where their hard-earned money is going.
As a registered nurse, Ward said that health professionals were supposed to help people, not push them into experimental treatments.
“We are to help people to heal and to be the best person that they can be physically, mentally, spiritually, even, and in doing this sort of care is not helping people,” she said. “I think it’s taking advantage of someone who is confused.”