EXCLUSIVE: Unearthed Data Makes Pennsylvania’s Puberty Blocker Payouts Look Even Sketchier

Pennsylvania saw a meteoric rise in the number of adolescents receiving puberty blockers through an insurance billing code currently being investigated under the Trump administration on fraud suspicions.

More than 220 claims for puberty blocking drugs were reimbursed for minors aged 10-13 with the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) billing code, E30.1, for precocious puberty between Jan. 1, 2013 and Dec. 31, 2024, costing taxpayers more than $1.8 million, according to the data. The number of claims in the 10-13 age group went from zero in 2012 and ballooned to 47 by 2016. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has raised concerns that this billing code may have been fraudulently used by gender doctors to obtain insurance coverage for sex-rejecting interventions.

“A spike of this magnitude in the diagnosis of precocious puberty — especially among children past the usual age — is highly atypical and raises the very real possibility that the diagnosis has been used as a billing workaround,” Dr. Kurt Miceli, medical director at Do No Harm, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Read the full story at the Daily Caller News Foundation.