Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is seeking more than $1 million in a civil lawsuit against a pediatric hospital and a Dallas doctor accused of transitioning gender dysphoric children and fraudulently billing taxpayers.
“I will use every legal tool available to ensure radical gender activists like Jarin face justice for hurting our kids,” Paxton said.
“Experimental ‘transition’ procedures on minors are illegal, unethical, and will not be tolerated in Texas.”
Neither Jarin nor Children’s Health responded immediately to requests from The Epoch Times for a comment.
Jarin is a pediatric gynecologist accused of regularly performing transgender procedures and giving both female and male patients puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, according to Paxton.
Paxton alleges that Children’s Health and Jarin billed Texas Medicaid and the state Children’s Health Insurance Program for cross-sex hormones and puberty blockers given to children as young as 9 years old.
The lawsuit alleges that Children’s Health and Jarin engaged in a healthcare fraud scheme involving pediatric gender transitioning procedures since 2017. Paxton alleges that the hospital and doctor continued to bill Texas Medicaid for cross-sex testosterone, estrogen, and puberty blockers for children in violation of Senate Bill 14. The bill banning such procedures for minors took effect Sept. 1, 2023.
Paxton also accused Children’s Health and Jarin of violating the Texas Health Care Program Fraud Prevention Act by “repeatedly changing patients’ gender in claims to Texas Medicaid in order to get illegal and unallowable claims paid.”
The lawsuit alleges the defendants falsely billed transgender claims as endocrine disorders and gave puberty blockers to healthy children under the guise of precocious puberty. Examples include hormone replacement therapy billed under a code for actual hormone deficiencies, and cross-sex estrogen hormones given to boys billed as contraception implants, the lawsuit alleged.
The defendants likely engaged in deceptive acts in violation of Texas law by falsifying or misrepresenting medical records, prescriptions, and billing submissions to pharmacies, insurers, and Medicaid, according to the attorney general’s office.
According to the lawsuit, Texas taxpayers have been billed millions of dollars for gender transition surgeries, hormones, and other procedures that turn healthy children and young adults into chronic patients.
The lawsuit is one of several that Paxton has filed against medical providers allegedly engaging in illegal procedures to transition children.
The lawsuits alleged that the doctors illegally provided high-dose cross-sex hormones to dozens of minor patients for gender transition purposes. The doctors allegedly used false diagnoses and billing codes to mask these unlawful prescriptions, the suits said.
