Healthcare Or The Lack Of…

For many trans people finding healthcare is a challenge, the laws now say that we have to be covered but now the challenge is finding a provider who will take us on as a patient.

Some Americans are denied 'lifesaving' health care because they are transgender
USA Today
By Kristin Lam,
December 11, 2018

[…]
From routine checkups and emergency room visits to medical and mental health services for gender dysphoria, transgender people face barriers to accessing health care. Experts and transgender folks across the nation tell USA TODAY about doctors denying services, express the need for comprehensive training among medical professionals and share stories of traveling great distances for competent care.
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A new threat
A leaked Department of Human and Health Services internal memo reported in October by The New York Times threatens to roll back progress in strengthening transgender rights made in the past 10 to 20 years.

By reportedly redefining sex as “male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth,” advocates say it erases not only the transgender community, but intersex people, too.

Comprising 1.7 percent of the global population, intersex people are born with a range of biological sex characteristics that may not fit typical notions of female or male bodies. The intersex community often faces discrimination in health care – involving issues of autonomy and consent – as transgender people do, says Kimberly Zieselman, who heads interACT, an advocacy organization for intersex youth.

The memo’s proposal that “reliable genetic testing” could rebut the sex listed on someone’s birth certificate does not work for intersex people, Zieselman says.

Even here in Connecticut trans men have a hard time finding a surgeon for top surgery and trans men also find it almost impossible to find an OBY/GYN healthcare provider.
Accessing health care

Despite the Affordable Care Act, issues remain to secure insurance reimbursement for treatment for gender dysphoria, says Alex Keuroghlian, who directs the National LGBT Health Education Center, which provides training for health care organizations on transgender health and gender identity.

The insurance companies are experts on saying “No” and they sharpen up their red pencils and their “Denied” stamps for us.

“These are lifesaving procedures, and to deny somebody a lifesaving procedure is malpractice,” Olson-Kennedy says. “And it’s incredibly problematic to put your own feelings and needs and opinions above the needs of the patient.”
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Olson-Kennedy spends much of her time talking with other providers and insurance companies to advocate for trans patients, as well as witnessing the trauma young people face from gender dysphoria compounded by the lack of available care.

Many insurance customers do not have any experience in advocating for ourselves, not just trans people. Sometimes it boils down to how you ask your question for example; trans women and men who want breast augmentation/reduction surgery. If you say I want breast implants/my breast removed you will get a response that they don’t cover plastic surgery but if instead you say “My doctor says that breast implants/breast reduction is medical necessary for my health” you are more likely to have the surgery covered.

The religious bigots are coming out in force they want everything in nice little boxes so they don’t have to think, thinking makes their head hurts people who look different from them make their head hurt.

They don’t want to think about intersex people… God said he made man and woman, he said nothing about intersex therefore they don’t exist.

They don’t want to think about trans people… God said he made man and woman, he said nothing about trans people therefore they don’t exist.