Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital In WA Shuts Down Youth Gender Clinic Amidst Federal Funding Threat
What arguably amounts to an appeasement strategy simply falls short.
The MultiCare Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital in Tacoma, Washington, notified patients on Monday that it would be closing its pediatric gender health clinic due to political and legal attacks on trans-affirming care. It will begin winding down operations immediately.
“Over the last year we have worked to find options that would allow us to continue to care for this important group of patients. But recent developments at the Federal level now threaten to cut off Medicare and Medicaid payments to MultiCare’s entire health system if we continue offering these services,” the message sent to patients, signed by MultiCare CEO Bill Robertson, reads. “Without those payments, our organization would cease to exist.”
Patients who are 18 and older will be redirected to their primary care physician for hormone replacement therapy, while minors already on puberty blockers or HRT will have to consult their health care team for options—seemingly outside the MultiCare system. A spokesperson told Erin in the Morning that behavioral health care, such as psychotherapy, will continue to be offered.
The stoppage is “due to recent escalations at the federal level to eliminate medical interventions to treat gender dysphoria for minors nationwide, as well as investigations and significant penalizations of health care organizations that provide such care,” the spokesperson confirmed.
Numerous health care institutions are indeed being probed by federal authorities, and the ensuing litigation can indeed be costly. However, the Trump regime has yet to actually make good on its threat of successfully withdrawing Medicaid and Medicare funding from a hospital for providing gender-affirming care.
At the same time, the majority of MultiCare patients rely on Medicaid and Medicare. This includes more than 300 primary, urgent, pediatric, and specialty care locations across Washington, Idaho, and Oregon, as well as 13 hospitals.
MultiCare told Erin in the Morning that this loss of funding could undermine the entire health system’s ability to operate.
“We recognize how important this care is to our gender health clinic patients and have a sense of the impact this will have on you and your family,” MultiCare’s CEO said in his Monday message to patients.
In September, doctors at Mary Bridge Children’s gender clinic stopped accepting new patients or writing new prescriptions for puberty blockers and hormone regimens. This was devastating for parents like Sierra, a mom from Kitsap County whose 12-year-old daughter is transgender. Pseudonyms have been provided due to safety and privacy concerns surrounding Sierra’s child.
“Based on my interactions with the medical staff at Mary Bridge, they’re heartbroken,” Sierra told Erin in the Morning. “They don’t support what the leadership is doing, although all of us, including me, understand they need federal funding in order to stay open.”
Sierra says many families like hers, especially in progressive areas of Washington, figured their care would be safeguarded from federal threats by state anti-discrimination laws.
“Trans children are the sacrificial lamb here,” she said. “In order to keep the show going, that’s what’s happening.”
However, what arguably amounts to an appeasement strategy simply falls short. If trans kids are deemed acceptable collateral, anyone could be next. We already know that Trump is also waging war on vaccines, mental health medications, and abortion, to name just a few kinds of care on the chopping block.
“People like me—maybe they don’t have trans kids, but they’re very liberal, very progressive—think, ‘Well, we’re in Washington, so we’re okay,’” Sierra told Erin in the Morning.
“That’s absolutely false. No one is safe until everybody is.”
The White House is continuing to target safe havens for trans youth—but the presence of institutions (or lack thereof) who are ready and willing to fight for the trans community has been consequential.
Hospitals, universities, and states that resisted executive overreach have not gone unscathed, but they have scored meaningful victories. A class action lawsuit in California successfully safeguarded patients’ data against a drummed-up subpoena aimed at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Maine sued and secured federal funding for school lunches in spite of Trumpian threats to cut it over the state’s defense of its trans students. And Boston Children’s Hospital took the feds to task after the Department of Justice came knocking. A judge quashed that subpoena in court.
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This is important to be precise about: no federal funding has actually been cut. What happened here is preemptive compliance, not enforcement.
For the Trump administration to legally do what they’re threatening, they would have to clear multiple hurdles they haven’t even started climbing yet: pass new law or issue a valid CMS rule through formal notice-and-comment, survive Administrative Procedure Act review, avoid unconstitutional coercion under the Spending Clause (you can’t threaten an entire hospital system’s funding over a narrow category of care), provide due process to each institution, and then win prolonged federal litigation against hospitals and states. That’s months or years, not a memo and a scare tactic.
None of that has happened. Not once. There is no precedent for CMS successfully pulling Medicare/Medicaid funding from a hospital for providing gender-affirming care.
Mary Bridge didn’t lose a legal fight — they chose not to have one. Understandable from a risk-averse executive perspective, maybe, but not neutral. Every institution that folds early teaches the federal government that intimidation works without courts, rules, or accountability.
That’s the danger here. If trans kids are acceptable collateral today, the list of “politically inconvenient” care that gets quietly dropped tomorrow only grows.
This literally makes me nauseous. I don’t understand how people can just turn their backs on the most vulnerable youth of this country.