Press Release: 2/25/2026

Senators Markey and Wyden Lead Effort to Stop Trump Assault on Hospitals Providing Health Care to Transgender Americans

 



Lead call on the Trump administration to stop getting between doctors and families



Text of the Letters (PDF)



Washington (February 23, 2026) – Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Subcommittee on Primary Health and Retirement Security and Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, (D-Ore.) today led a group of Senate Democrats in calling on the Trump administration to withdraw two proposed regulations that would place unprecedented restrictions on health care providers and hospitals from providing evidence-based medical treatment for gender dysphoria to young Americans.



If finalized, these proposed rules would condition hospital participation in the Medicare and Medicaid programs on not providing gender-affirming care for minors, and would ban the use of federal Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funds for such care. Together, these proposed rules pose a severe threat to the health and safety of transgender and gender diverse youth by impeding their access to essential and life-saving medical care, and would force hospitals to make an impossible choice between caring for their patients or risk being cut out of the health care system.



“This policy would mark an unprecedented intrusion of partisan politics and ideology into medical decision-making and severely restrict access to evidence-based, medically-necessary care,” the senators wrote. “This proposed rule would place the federal government directly between physicians, patients, and families by conditioning hospital participation in Medicare and Medicaid on the denial of individualized, clinician-directed care. The conditions of participation (CoPs) for hospitals have never before been used to compel providers to disregard their medical judgment or prevent patients from receiving care that clinicians, in consultation with patients and parents, determine to be medically appropriate.”



The letters, sent to Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz, offered detailed comments on the proposed regulations. The first letter made clear that using conditions of participation to restrict specific types of medical care that do not align with the administration’s extreme ideology would violate guardrails put in place by Congress that prevent the federal government from dictating to medical professionals the type of care hospitals can or cannot provide. The second explained how the proposal violated core Medicaid statutory requirements by denying medically necessary care and substituting federal ideology for clinician judgment.



Senators Markey and Wyden were joined by Senators Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawai’i), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai’i), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.)



The full letters can be found HERE.



The letters follow Senator Markey’s long history of advocating for the rights of transgender Americans:




  • On February 11, 2026, Senator Markey and Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), reintroduced the Transgender Bill of Rights, a landmark resolution that reaffirms the federal government’s duty to protect and codify the rights of transgender and nonbinary people and ensure that trans people have access to medical care, shelter, safety, and economic security. The resolution creates a comprehensive framework to protect trans and nonbinary Americans from discrimination on the basis of gender identity or expression. Senator Markey and Representative Jayapal previously introduced the resolution on March 30, 2023.

  • On January 13, 2026, Senator Markey joined trans rights advocates at a rally outside of the Supreme Court during oral arguments for Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J., cases considering the constitutionality of state trans student sports bans. On November 19, 2025, Senator Markey joinedSenator Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI), Congressional Equality Caucus Co-Chair Representative Becca Balint (D-VT), and Democratic Women’s Caucus Chair Representative Teresa Leger Fernández (D-NM) and over a 100 members of Congress in filing an amicus brief with the Supreme Court in these cases.

  • On November 19, 2025, during Transgender Awareness Week, Senator Markey led the introduction of the Transgender Health Care Access Act in the Senate, a legislation that would protect access to competent, compassionate, and affirming health care.