(Texas Scorecard) – Vanessa Sivadge, a registered nurse who blew the whistle on Texas Children’s Hospital for allegedly billing gender mutilating procedures to Medicaid, told lawmakers further investigation is needed.
Performing gender mutilating procedures on minors is a violation of Texas law.
At a meeting of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services, Sivadge asserted that false diagnoses were submitted to Medicaid by TCH, its Health Maintenance Organization, and two endocrinologists named Dr. David Paul and Dr. Richard Roberts in order to pay for gender mutilating procedures on minors using tax dollars.
According to Sivadge, these procedures were ineligible for reimbursement.
“Potentially millions or billions of federal funds may have been spent on reimbursements for gender-affirming care—under the guise of other reimbursable endocrine [hormonal] disorders,” Sivadge told lawmakers.
She then urged legislators to investigate whether or not state funds are being used to cover sex change operations on minors that are not deemed reimbursable. She also asked that whistleblowers such as herself be protected from politically-motivated attempts to silence them.
Sivadge requested that members of the committee take action in two different ways. Firstly, she advocated for legislation requiring that binary sex assigned at birth be consistent with all medical records for Texans.
“Number two, passing legislation that would require hospitals to include mandatory training for employees on how to understand and know their rights as conscientious objectors in alignment with Title VII,” she said.
Last month, Sivadge was fired after levying accusations against TCH—alleging that medical professionals were engaging in Medicaid fraud while continuing to chemically castrate minors despite claiming that they had ceased to do so.
“This past Friday on August 16, TCH fired me effective immediately,” she wrote in a letter to investigative journalist Christopher Rufo.
“This is unlawful for two reasons: it is retaliation for my coming forward with information on TCH’s egregious pattern of deception and Medicaid fraud, and this action also illegally disregarded my request to transfer due to my belief that these procedures provide irreversible harm and lifelong regret to children confused by their sex,” it continued.