This stuff is expensive. Probably nobody anywhere in the family has insurance that covers it, which means it all falls on the taxpayer. Meanwhile, people can’t afford actual medical care, like for illness, accidents, and so on.
Imagine an advertising campaign that matched every transformer with a death from cancer, MRSA, or other disease.
From what I’ve read, the hormone treatment runs about $1,500 a year. There are ailments where hormone treatment would be part of a normal insurance policy, but I doubt that regular coverage would include this for transgender stuff. If you were looking at the whole package...drugs, surgery, hormone stuff...you’d be talking at $20,000 to $25,000 for your basic episode of transgendering.
I would suspect that the parents are worried that the hormones are step one, and the surgery cost will be stuck upon them. Most middle-class American parents would not be able to cover this kind of bill and you’d have to worry about the kid coming up in three years to tell you the operation was a failure, and they want to revert back to the ‘self’. They’d then ask for another $20,000 to revert back.