According to a report, the number of transgender operations almost quadrupled in the U.S. beginning in 2018 as a result of the Obama administration’s requirement that health insurance providers pay for the treatments. This prompted medical professionals to flock to the lucrative procedures, which are costly.

According to a Columbia University report titled “National Estimates of Gender-Affirming Surgery within the US” that was released in August by JAMA, the number of transgender operations rose from 4,550 in 2016 to 13,000 in 2019.

“Like other studies,” the study’s author Dr. Jason Wright wrote, “we found a remarkable increase in the overall number” of treatments.

“The number of operations carried out in the US appears to have climbed significantly, virtually doubling from 2016 to 2019,” according to Wright’s results.

The figures then increased again between 2000 and 2005, and again between 2006 and 2011.

According to Wright, “state and federal rules requiring the coverage of transition-related care are likely to blame” for the sharp increase in surgical procedures.

The Obama government first said in 2014 that Medicare would cover care for transgender people again after a 33-year ban. Then, in 2018, Obamacare made this policy permanent and made insurance companies fund all trans surgeries.

The survey also discovered that more people sought medical attention for “gender identity disorder” than ever before, going from 12,855 in 2016 to 38,470 in 2020.

Two national surgical databases were used to gather data for the study, and both in-patient as well as out-patient data were examined.

More than half of the cases were between 19 and 30 years old, 22% were between 31 and 40 years old, and 8% were between 12 and 18 years old.

The study found that about 3,000 of the patients who were younger were girls who had surgery to have breasts removed. The number of sexual surgeries went up as patients got older.

Also, 15% of patients, or 48,000 people, seemed to say that they had problems with their mental health or with using drugs.

Although suicide rates were not examined, a PLOS ONE study from 2011 that examined transgender surgery patients in Sweden discovered that these individuals had 4.9 times the likelihood of attempting suicide and 19.1 times the likelihood of dying by suicide.

The study found that “after sex change, people with transsexualism have much higher risks of death, suicidal behavior, and mental morbidity compared to the general population. Our research indicates that while sex reassignment can help with gender dysphoria, it may not be enough for treating transsexualism. Patients in this group should thus get better mental and physical care following sex reassignment.”

Another recent study discovered that the United States stands out among Western countries in its hasty push for gender reassignment surgery and other risky medical procedures, particularly on children, and that European nations, where a lot of the treatments originated, are starting to back off from outright embracing of transgender procedures.