A major driver of our nation’s growing transgender lunacy is the fact that, when government subsidies are attached to it, “gender affirming care” is extremely profitable to the healthcare behemoths that have themselves become addicted to government dollars.

This week, a video surfaced from Vanderbilt University Medical Center in which a Dr. Shane Taylor was caught on tape saying in 2018, “Starting January 1, 2017, according to the Affordable Care Act, insurance carriers are mandated to cover medical expenses for trans folks.” Taylor went on to note that some of Vanderbilt’s “financial folks” looked at how much each transgender patient could bring into the hospital and found that, just looking at “top surgery” (not even including “bottom surgery”), each transgender patient would be extremely profitable.

“It’s a lot of money,” Taylor said. "These surgeries make a lot of money."

So much for children's well-being.

Some doctors at Vanderbilt might object to the mutilation and chemical castration of minors for profit. But Vanderbilt’s leadership thought of this problem and made clear to doctors that they would face reprisals and potentially dismissal if they were to object.

“If you are going to assert conscientious objection, you have to realize that that is problematic,” Dr. Ellen Clayton warned in a separate video. “What I want you to take home is that saying you are not going to do something because of your religious beliefs is not without consequences. And it should not be without consequence. If you don’t want to do this kind of work, don’t work at Vanderbilt.”

Clayton’s message was clear: Either get on board with the mutilation of children for profit or leave. That’s illegal.

That is probably why Vanderbilt removed the video from its website after it was exposed on social media. Vanderbilt later denied that the institution ever punished anyone for objecting to the mutilation of children for profit. But no one accused them of doing so, and no one had to. What Clayton was caught on tape doing, threatening to punish any objectors, may have prompted objectors to leave before they could be retaliated against by this unethical hospital's leadership.

It is bad enough that the federal government ever subsidizes completely unnecessary, elective sex-reassignment surgery by mandating that insurance companies cover such procedures through Obamacare. It means that every single person in America is subsidizing transgender surgeries just by paying monthly health insurance premiums.

But what is far worse is that taxpayers and rate-payers are also subsidizing the mutilation of children for profit through the exact same mechanism.

Young people’s brains and bodies are not fully formed when they are going through adolescence. Not liking your body is completely normal for an adolescent, but most people eventually become comfortable in their own natural skin.

It is morally wrong to let children completely alter their bodies before their judgment is even fully mature. It is doubly wrong that hospitals are making money off of these mutilations. It is triply wrong that the government is subsidizing this form of child abuse by mandating insurance coverage for it.

Congress can and must remove elective gender transitions from the list of mandated items that insurance companies must cover.