In wake of underage trans surgery scandal, Oklahoma lawmakers consider ARPA funds for OU Children's Hospital
The Oklahoma Legislature is set to vote on allocating $90.9 million in federal funding for the recently unified OU Health/Medical system.
The Oklahoma Legislature will meet next week to vote on allocating a large portion of the 1.8 Billion dollars in ARPA funding that given to Oklahoma by the federal government for Covid relief. This special session comes in wake of a story first reported by the UnWokable Substack last week, revealing that The University of Oklahoma Children’s Hospital (OUCH) provides medical transition services to children “under the age of 16 years.”
The OUCH website states that it collaborates with k-12 schools to provide “individual and family therapy,” chemical injections for “pausing puberty” in prepubescent children, and hormone treatments such as testosterone and estrogen injections. The website also states that the hospital will help children “find surgeons who perform gender-affirming surgeries.” Surgeries listed by Oklahoma City Surgeons that provide provide such procedures include “bottom” and “top” surgeries, as depicted below.
In the upcoming special session set to reconvene on September 28, 2022, Oklahoma legislators will decide if OU Children’s Hospital will receive “$46.9 million to expand emergency room capacity and “build long-term in patient bed capacity for children in mental health crisis.” Based upon the intention and scope of the of the Roy G Biv Program as outlined by the OUCH website, underage transition surgeries would necessarily fall under the scope of what is considered a “mental health crisis,” for which a child would need “long-term in patient bed capacity.”
Sources close to the Oklahoma House and Senate have told the UnWokable Substack, that legislators have been inundated with calls and emails demanding that they do not fund underage procedures with either federal or state taxpayer dollars, and that legislators are scrambling in response.
It must be noted that an additional $44 million dollars is on the docket to be delivered to the “University Hospital Authority (UHA), OU Health (OUH) and the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center (OUHSC) to implement a new electronic record system and modernize the technology infrastructure of OUH in order to provide Oklahomans with cutting-edge therapies they cannot currently receive,” according to okhouse.gov. This mirrors the statements made by OU President Joseph Herroz (who is a strong proponent of the DEI notion of “inclusive medical procedures”), said in June of 2021, when the OU Board of Regents voted to merge all university health related services under the same university controlled administrative system.
“This merger of equals into a single enterprise will bring immense benefits to the patients we serve, Oklahoma, and our students and employees,” Harroz said. “Uniting the strengths of these organizations will give Oklahomans the true flagship academic health system that our state needs. In the past, Oklahomans have traveled to other states to find treatment options fueled by the innovation that comes when researchers and physicians work side-by-side in academic hospital settings. Now that model will be available in the heart of Oklahoma under the OU banner,” said OU President Joseph Harroz, in June of 2021.
As stated in the previous article, “In 2021, the OU Board of Regents voted to make OU Children’s Hospital a part of the unified University of Oklahoma health and medical system and as such, is supported by state and federal tax dollars.”
This means that the combined OU Health structure is set to receive at least $90.9 million in federal Covid relief funding, if approved by the legislature in the upcoming special session.
by Mark Ousley, September 23, 2022.