WASHINGTON—The Department of Health and Human Services is taking steps to ensure that federal HIV/AIDS funds cannot be used for so-called gender-affirming care, as they were under President Joe Biden’s administration, The Daily Wire has learned.
Under the Biden administration, states were using federal funding for HIV/AIDS treatment to cover transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers. For example, the Biden administration allowed the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Drug Assistance Program to provide “access to gender-affirming hormone therapy.”
The Department of Health and Human Services declared its intent to block the funds from being misused in April. Now, it is taking further steps to make sure that fund recipients are aware.
“The Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program is a lifeline for thousands of Americans living with HIV, and HRSA will not allow funds to be diverted from their true purpose,” HRSA Administrator Tom Engels explained to The Daily Wire on Friday. “Every dollar of the AIDS Drug Assistance Program must support HIV/AIDS-related treatment — not sex trait modification medications unrelated to HIV care.”
HHS will post a “Notice of Funding Opportunity” on Friday through its Health Resources and Services Administration, adding language that clarifies funding — specifically the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP) Emergency Relief Funds — are strictly limited to HIV/AIDS treatments. If medications such as hormones are medically necessary for HIV/AIDS care, they will be covered, but not if they are for “sex-trait modification purposes,” the notice says, and any funds received through drug rebates will have to remain within the HIV/AIDS program and can’t be redirected for other unrelated health purposes.
“This Notice of Funding Opportunity makes clear that HRSA is safeguarding program integrity and cracking down to ensure that people living with HIV get the care they need,” Engels added.
Some states were using the funds to pay for hormonal treatments for gender transitions, even when they weren’t medically necessary for HIV treatment — raising questions about whether drug rebate funds were being redirected to other health services.
The District of Columbia Department of Health AIDS Drug Assistance Program, for example, openly covered transgender hormone treatments and used the federal 340B program to subsidize those hormones.
“The initial funding will be appropriated from the DC Ryan White Part B ADAP grant award, and any other cost for pharmacy provider education will be supplemented by DC ADAP rebates,” the explanation of the program explains.
In New Jersey, the Department of Medicine at Rutgers University states that it “offers gender-affirming hormone therapy for transgender persons” in line with the disgraced “World Professional Association of Transgender Health,” describing the transgender procedures as “an important part of a holistic approach to wellness and preventative medicine.”
This week, HHS added language to the notice of funding opportunity that reminds states that “therapeutics funded under the ADAP may only be provided ‘to treat HIV/AIDS or prevent the serious deterioration of health arising from HIV/AIDS in eligible individuals, including measures for the prevention and treatment of opportunistic infections.’”
For example, HHS notes, if an ADAP provides trans hormones, it can only allow those hormones to be dispensed to “treat HIV/AIDS or prevent the serious deterioration of health arising from HIV/AIDS, rather than for non-statutory purposes such as specified sex-trait modification procedures.”
The language will also remind states that the Ryan White HIV/Aids Program legislation states: “A State shall ensure that any drug rebates received on drugs purchased from funds provided pursuant to this section [ADAP] are applied to activities supported under this subpart [RWHAP Part B], with priority given to activities described under this section [ADAP].”
“As such,” the language notes, “all 340B rebates directly generated by a federal dollar are subject to HRSA HAB’s rebate policies and rules for expenditure. All rebates generated through ADAP must be used for RWHAP Part B activities, with priority given to ADAP, rather than diverted for unsupported activities that exceed the RWHAP’s limited statutory purpose, such as for specified sex-trait modification procedures.”
