This post was updated at 7:47 p.m. with news that the House unanimously passed the bill.



Leaders of the state House of Representatives have taken steps to defuse a looming fight over transgender services that could have imperiled health insurance coverage for tens of thousands of Pennsylvania children.

The House Rules Committee Monday voted to strip out language in a Childrens Health Insurance Program reauthorization bill that would have barred CHIP coverage for gender reassignment surgery.

The deletion leaves the CHIP program in position - assuming final House and Senate passage - to be reauthorized as is through 2019 with no fear of a potential veto from Gov. Tom Wolf, whose administration expanded the program last year to include transgender services.

Monday night, The House unanimously passed the bill Monday and sent it to the Senate, which had inserted the Republican-penned prohibition three weeks ago, sparking opposition by Democrats. The bill reauthorizes the program for 2018 and beyond. It currently covers 177,000 children in Pennsylvania.

That expansion has drawn opposition from some social conservatives, who object to seeing public funding used for medical services, including surgery, for what they note many experts consider a psychological problem.

Their fight gained traction in the state Senate last month.

It's CHIP reauthorization language permitted families to use the program to cover counseling services, drugs like so-called "puberty blockers" and other costly treatments that can help kids with gender identity issues.

Some of the hormone treatments, which are not permanent, can essentially buy time for kids to discover if they are truly transgender before becoming full-bodied men or women.

But the irreversible physical step of sex reassignment surgery would be barred.

House Majority Leader Dave Reed said Monday he understands some House members agree with the Senate's move, and some may want a more all-encompassing prohibition on gender reassignment services.

But the sense of his leadership team, Reed said, is "that's better to deal with separately while not endangering two hundred thousand kids' and their families health care going into the holiday season."

The transgender debate will now likely move to Rep. Jesse Topper's House Bill 1933, which would end coverage for all transgender services in both CHIP and Medicaid and, in necessary, for the state to seek any needed waivers from the federal government to do so.

Topper, a Republican from Bedford County, formally introduced his bill Monday, and it was quickly passed through the House Health Committee on a 16-8 party-line vote with all Republicans in favor and all eight Democrats present opposed.

CHIP provides health insurance to children in low- and moderate-income families whose income is too high to qualify for standard Medicaid programs. It is scheduled to sunset at year's end in Pennsylvania without enactment of the reauthorization.

Wolf had been sharply critical of the rollback of coverage for transgender services, but had not said to date whether it would cause him to veto the bill.

The governor's spokesman, J.J. Abbott, praised the leadership's move Monday as the responsible thing to do.

"For decades, CHIP reauthorization was done in a straightforward way because this program is so important to so many children and families," Abbott wrote in an email to PennLive.

"Governor Wolf urges the General Assembly to get this clean reauthorization to his desk as soon as possible."

Associated Press contributed to this story.