Several attorneys general made ‘abusive legal demands’ to get trans patients’ medical records, senators allege
Four attorneys general in conservative states have abused their authority to investigate transgender patients and their health care, and hospitals must do more to protect them, a new Senate Finance Committee report argues.
Four attorneys general in conservative states have abused their authority to investigate transgender patients and their health care, and hospitals must do more to protect them, a new Senate Finance Committee report argues.
The report, titled “How State Attorneys General Target Transgender Youth and Adults by Weaponizing the Medicaid Program and their Health Oversight Authority,” investigates how attorneys general in Tennessee, Missouri, Indiana and Texas have opened investigations into hospitals for alleged Medicaid fraud or violations of consumer protection laws. They opened the investigations, the report argues, “in order to further ideological and political goals,” and there has been “significant variation in hospitals’ responses to such requests and their approaches to safeguarding the privacy of one of their most vulnerable patient populations—LGBTQIA+ people.”
The investigations have been opened as hundreds of state bills have sought to roll back transgender rights over the last few years. In recent years, 24 states have passed restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for trans minors, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy and surgery.
The report specifically singles out Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which turned over transgender patients’ medical records to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti in June as part of Skrmetti’s investigation into alleged medical billing fraud.
“Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in Tennessee sits at one extreme: the hospital failed to object in any material manner to the Tennessee Attorney General’s sweeping request and then caused undue terror to young patients and their families by supplying the Tennessee Attorney General with some of the records requested and then, again, by erroneously notifying some patients of medical record disclosures that had not occurred,” the report says.
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