"Medically Necessary Treatment" Part 2

I came across this article that had a good argument for providing medically necessary treatment to inmates…

Transgender Exceptionalism Should Not Cloud Legal Analysis
Jurist
by Jennifer Levo
October 16, 2012

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts recently announced that it will appeal a decision in which Judge Mark Wolf of the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts ordered the Department of Corrections (DOC) to provide gender reassignment surgery (GRS) for a transgender woman currently serving a life sentence.
[…]
Media coverage and popular criticism has centered around three central themes. The first theme has been that GRS is inessential medical care. The second theme is that, as a convicted murderer, Michelle Kosilek should not receive medical care that those outside prison walls may not be able to afford. The third theme has been articulated less clearly, but is no less evident, and it is that no matter what anyone thinks about medical care or prison justice, there is no way to rationally understand how a transgender person in prison can be entitled to this care. I call this third theme "transgender exceptionalism."
[…]
One troubling feature of the criticism leveled at the Kosilek ruling is that nearly no one challenging it has read it. If they had, they would understand that, as to the first two themes about the medical nature of the treatment and the question of whether an incarcerated inmate must be provided such treatment, there is nothing new jurisprudentially in Wolf's opinion. Much of his decision reiterates what he found as legal and factual matters in a preliminary decision issued in the case over a decade ago — matters well-grounded in incontrovertible legal analysis.

In his decision, Wolf held what every court to have addressed the issue has held: GID is a serious and legitimate medical condition recognized by medical professional organizations and identified in all major medical texts. Wolf also found that there is an established course of treatment (known as the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, named for the endocrinologist who pioneered them) that includes hormones and GRS in appropriate circumstances and that the denial of treatment for a patient with severe GID leads to serious self-harm, mutilation and likely suicide. As the record in the case shows, Kosilek did mutilate her own genitals and twice attempted suicide.

I wish that the case didn’t involve Kosilek who is a convicted killer, I don’t like to give her the surgery paid for by us, but where do we draw the line. Is it okay to give a murder treatment for diabetes but not cancer? Or is it all right to give treatment for bank robbers but not rapist?

We cannot limit what treatment that will be provided or to whom that treatment will be provided to. Any line that we draw will be arbitrary, we must provide the same treatment to all inmates equally and we must provide the best treatment that can be provided to all.