TV News LIES

The Trump administration is facing a legal complaint from a group of government employees affected by a new policy going into effect Thursday that eliminates coverage for gender-affirming care in federal health insurance programs.

The complaint, filed Thursday on the employees’ behalf by the Human Rights Campaign, is in response to an August announcement from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that it would no longer cover “chemical and surgical modification of an individual’s sex traits through medical interventions” in health insurance programs for federal employees and US Postal Service workers.

The complaint argues that denying coverage of gender-affirming care is sex-based discrimination and asks the personnel office to rescind the policy.

“This policy is not about cost or care – it is about driving transgender people and people with transgender spouses, children, and dependents out of the federal workforce,” the Human Rights Campaign Foundation president, Kelley Robinson, said in a statement announcing the move.

The complaint, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, includes testimonies from four current federal workers at the state department, health and human services and the postal service who would be directly affected by the elimination of coverage.

For instance, the postal service employee has a daughter whose doctors recommended that she get puberty blockers and potentially hormone replacement therapy for her diagnosed gender dysphoria, which would not be covered under the new OPM policy, according to the complaint.

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Dr. Kade Goepferd watched the Trump administration's moves on Thursday to ban gender-affirming care for transgender youth with "a mix of sadness and frustration."

Goepferd, who is the founder of Children's Minnesota Gender Health Program, says that for the medical community, nothing has changed about the evidence supporting gender-affirming care that could justify the government's actions.

"There's a massive propaganda and disinformation campaign that is selectively targeting this small population of already vulnerable kids and their families," Goepferd says.

Federal health officials said many times at Thursday's announcement that their actions were driven by science and evidence, not politics or ideology. They frequently praised a report published by the Department of Health and Human Services in November. It concluded that clinicians who provide medical care to help youth transition have failed their patients and emphasized the benefits of psychotherapy as an alternative.

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With subsidies for Affordable Care Act (ACA) health insurance set to expire, Americans who rely on them will probably switch to plans with lower monthly premiums and high deductibles or decide not to purchase any coverage, which will have a serious and damaging impact on the entire sector, according to healthcare policy experts.

The average amount ACA plan enrollees pay annually for premiums is estimated to more than double, from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 in 2026, according to a KFF analysis.

That will then have economic downstream effects, including for rural hospitals and people who have employer-sponsored health insurance, according to the experts.

With “a significant portion of people dropping their marketplace coverage and being uninsured, it doesn’t just impact them, it impacts everyone”, said Emma Wager, a senior policy analyst for KFF’s program on the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

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A California jury on Friday awarded $40m to two women who said Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder was to blame for their ovarian cancer.

The jury in Los Angeles superior court awarded $18m to Monica Kent and $22m to Deborah Schultz and her husband after finding that Johnson & Johnson knew for years its talc-based products were dangerous but failed to warn consumers.

Erik Haas, Johnson & Johnson’s worldwide vice-president of litigation, said in a statement the company plans to “immediately appeal this verdict and expect to prevail as we typically do with aberrant adverse verdicts”.

A spokesperson for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2014, according to court records. Schultz was diagnosed in 2018. Both women are California residents who say they used J&J’s baby powder after bathing for 40 years. Their treatments for ovarian cancer have involved major surgeries and dozens of rounds of chemotherapy, they testified at the trial.

In closing arguments that Reuters viewed on Courtroom View Network, Andy Birchfield, an attorney for the women, told the jury that Johnson & Johnson knew as far back as the 1960s that its product could cause cancer.

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Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Puerto Rico also saw an increase in the spread of the virus, landing them in the “moderate” tier.

New York City, which reports as a separate jurisdiction from the rest of the state, moved into the most severe category for “very high” flu activity.

Much of this season’s flu activity is being driven by a new variant of influenza called subclade K. The subclade is a type of H3N2 influenza, which has historically caused more hospitalizations and deaths.

It’s not too late to boost your protection against the virus. “CDC recommends that every 6 months and older who has not yet been vaccinated this season get an annual influenza (flu) vaccine,” the agency said Friday.

The CDC said it has distributed 127 million doses so far.

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A federal judge on Tuesday blocked U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing in 22 states a provision of the Republican’s signature tax and domestic policy bill that would deprive Planned Parenthood and local affiliates that perform abortions of Medicaid funding.

U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston said a group of Democratic state attorneys general who had challenged the provision were likely to succeed in establishing that the law constitutes an unconstitutional retroactive condition on their participation in the Medicaid healthcare program.

Talwani called the law “impermissibly ambiguous,” and said that allowing it to remain in effect would “increase the percentage of patients unable to receive birth control and preventive screenings, thereby prompting an increase in states’ healthcare costs.”

The judge, who was appointed by Democratic President Barack Obama, issued a preliminary injunction that covers the 22 states that sued to challenge the provision led by California, Connecticut and New York, as well as the District of Columbia. But she put her ruling on hold for seven days to allow the Trump administration to appeal.

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