Diana’s Little Corner in the Nutmeg State: They Will Do Anything To Get Out Of Paying

Sunday, January 31, 2016

They Will Do Anything To Get Out Of Paying

Insurance companies are known for trying to weasel out of paying for a medical claim and especially if it involves trans people.

UnitedHealth Medicare plan must cover U.S. sex reassignment surgery
Reuters
By Brendan Pierson
January 29, 2016

A U.S. government panel has ruled that a privately run Medicare plan must cover sex reassignment surgery for a Texas transgender woman, a decision her attorney said was the first of its kind.

Charlene Lauderdale, a U.S. Air Force veteran, first sought surgery through her UnitedHealthcare/AARP Medicare Complete insurance plan in November 2014. The federally funded plan, operated by a unit of UnitedHealth Group Inc, denied the request.

An administrative law judge with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services ruled last April that the plan must cover the surgery, and the agency's Medicare Appeals Council upheld that decision this month.

This strikes close to home because I have UnitedHealthcare/AARP Medicare Complete.

Back in May of 2014 the U.S. Department of Health and Services review board overturned the ban that prohibited Medicare from covering transition-related medical procedures for transgender people. But still insurance companies tried to avoid paying.

According to Young, many transgender patients have been unable to get coverage for sex reassignment surgery because insurers or contractors hired by Medicare to make such determinations have decided the procedure is cosmetic, or not medically necessary, among other reasons.

Young said the decision in Lauderdale's case was the first time HHS ordered a Medicare Advantage plan to cover sex reassignment surgery. Though the decision is not legally binding on other cases, Young said he believed it would set an important "guidepost."

So what this means is that other trans people will still have to fight for their legally required coverage.

For those of you who can't get to sleep I suggest reading the decision here.

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Quotes

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

A right delayed is a right denied.Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.

Martin Luther King Jr.

No one is born hating another person… People must learn to hate and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.
Nelson Mandela

We can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist
James Baldwin

There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.
Newton Lee

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

"The point is that there are always obstacles, whether they seem insurmountable or merely bothersome. The question is not how difficult the path, but whether in your heart, you wish to undertake the journey."
Zandru's Forge

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.
Mahatma Gandhi

“I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time -- when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness...
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

You've Got To Be Carefully Taught
You've got to be taught
To hate
And fear
You've got to be taught
From year
To year
Its got to
Be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to
Be carefully
Taught
You've got to be taught
To be
Afraid
Of people
Who's eyes are oddly made
And people who's skin is a different shade

South Pacific
Songwriters: Oscar Hammerstein II / Richard Rogers

Sunday, January 31, 2016

They Will Do Anything To Get Out Of Paying

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