As quite a few Dems claim there are no child surgeries in the States [investigation has revealed actually around 14,000 were performed] this bill is going to be interesting as it will get more open discussion of what is going on.
I find this mind-boggling that there is this level of lack of transparency. I suppose it makes sense, and it's something we take for granted in the UK. We have the NHS so there is a unified health service where data can be centrally collected from but the US is lots of independent providers without the same obligation to provide data and no accountability as there isn't an equivalent of Freedom of Information requests.
But it also shows a lack of oversight and regulation.
The Democrats saying this hasn't been happening and there then being evidence of it happening in even just a few cases, demonstrates a problem. For it to be happening at the level of thousands is a dereliction of duty and a complete safeguarding failure at a level which constituted a national scandal. Ethically it's breeching a lot.
I think the introduction of the bill is therefore important and much needed. Arguably the Dems should have been bringing bills to safeguard rather than ban if they believe so strongly in protecting trans rights but that ship has now sailed and they can't blame anyone but themselves for that.
They should have been aware of the problem.
Instead it looks like the industry is completely devoid of any regulation whatsoever.
And that's where it gets really weird as it's generally the Republicans who are against state intervention, but in this case it's the opposite.
This in turn asked questions about the relationship between the Democratic party and big health companies.
Which then has other consequences.