New Mexico will continue funding gender-affirming care for minors after a federal rule ending Medicaid support for such care goes into effect.
On 13 August, the Trump administration finalized a rule – set to go into effect on 13 October – that will end funding for gender-affirming care through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (Chip).
New Mexico’s “Health Care Authority is planning to continue covering these services using state funds”, Timothy Fowler, a state health care authority spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Earlier this year, New Mexico also announced that it would cover the cost of expiring Affordable Care Act tax credits for residents who purchase health insurance on the state marketplace. In July, a news analysis showed that New Mexico was the only state in the country where Affordable Care Act enrollment increased after federal subsidies expired at the end of 2025.
“We created the Health Care Affordability Fund for moments like this – when Washington fails to protect working families and the most vulnerable among us,” New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, said in a statement at the time. New Mexico created its Health Care Affordability Fund in 2021.
New Mexico records the second-highest percentage of residents enrolled in Medicaid or Chip, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, with 41.4% of the population enrolled in the programs. According to KFF, 61% of the state’s children are insured through one of those two programs.
In recent years, New Mexico has become a haven for gender-affirming healthcare in the south-west. In 2023 the state legislature passed a Reproductive and Gender-Affirming Health Care Freedom Act, and a growing number of families have relocated to the state as protections for transgender youth disappeared in neighboring states. The Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimates that 4,800 transgender teens between the ages of 13 and 17 live in New Mexico today.
Gender-affirming care includes a range of medical, social and psychological services, including puberty blockers or hormones such as estrogen and testosterone, as well as speech therapy, body hair removal and counseling. Major medical organizations support it as medically necessary and lifesaving.
On Thursday, New Jersey announced that it will also protect access to gender-affirming care through a new shield law signed by the state’s governor, Mikie Sherrill.
