Insurance Part 2

After I wrote yesterday’s blog the Boston Herald came out with this are article,

Insurers unsure on transgender care
Meanwhile patients unable to find docs for procedures
Thursday, October 30, 2014
By: Marie Szaniszlo

Four months after the state Division of Insurance put health plans on notice that denying medically necessary treatment to transgender people is prohibited sex discrimination, insurers are still grappling with what constitutes medical necessity, and patients are struggling to find doctors who’ll treat them.

The answer is easy, what the AMA, APA, WPATH and other medical associations deem medical necessary and not the insurance companies.

On the other hand, he said, Harvard Pilgrim does not want to approve procedures such as facial feminization for transgender people if those procedures would be considered merely cosmetic for other people.

“If we cover them for transgender patients, we would be being reverse-discriminatory,” said Dr. Robert Nierman, medical director at Tufts Health Plan.

But Ruben Hopwood of Fenway Health said facial feminization is not about wanting a “cuter nose.” A transgender person’s appearance is more likely to be the difference between getting a job or not getting one, and walking down the street unafraid or being attacked, Hopwood said.

That’s right, it is not about a face lift, but it is about improving the quality of life for us. It is the same as a person’s who’s face was disfigured because of an accident.

Let the medical community decide what is medically necessary and not the insurance company’s bottom line.