When you have to go to hospital it is a crap shoot trans trans people because we never know if we are going to get discriminated, will we be told that they won’t treat trans patients? Our worries are even more so if it is a religious owned hospital.
But there are many more hospitals and medical facilities that still don’t cover medically necessary healthcare for us. Many of them are in states where there’re no protection for us.
Here in Connecticut last year I did training at a Catholic hospital in Hartford that said their parent company wants to be more affirming. So you never know what is facing you when you walk into an ER, it’s a crap shoot.
Following lawsuit, Catholic health-care provider changes policy on transgender careWe see this over and over with trans children who are beginning puberty or Tanner Stage 2 when our bodies start to betray us.
The lawsuit asserted that PeaceHealth discriminated against Paxton Enstad, a 16-year-old transgender boy seeking coverage for top surgery.
Crosscut
By Lilly Fowler
January 4, 2019
A few years ago, Paxton Enstad was barely able to get out of bed. He had stopped doing well at Bellingham's Squalicum High School, no longer participating in extracurricular activities such as swimming — or even showering.
[…]
Paxton’s parents noticed. The teen was wearing baggy clothes. A medication for depression helped only slightly.
[…]
Slowly, Paxton started putting the pieces together by doing research on his own. There was a name for what he had: gender dysphoria. Paxton, labeled a female at birth, was transgender.
At the time, his mother, Cheryl, was a medical social worker at PeaceHealth St. Joseph Medical Center in Bellingham. But PeaceHealth refused to cover the surgery. After taking out a second mortgage and using money from his college fund, the family paid approximately $11,000 out of pocket for his operation.A victory!
[…]
Then the Enstad family sued PeaceHealth.
“We feel that it is discriminatory to say all transgender care isn’t covered,” Enstad explained.
[…]
The lawsuit, filed October 2017 in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, was settled last month for an undisclosed amount. According to the company, PeaceHealth had begun shifting toward transgender care in 2016 — before the lawsuit was filed. In a statement, the company said, “effective January 1, 2017, PeaceHealth’s employee medical plan was changed to cover medically necessary transgender surgery.”
But there are many more hospitals and medical facilities that still don’t cover medically necessary healthcare for us. Many of them are in states where there’re no protection for us.
Here in Connecticut last year I did training at a Catholic hospital in Hartford that said their parent company wants to be more affirming. So you never know what is facing you when you walk into an ER, it’s a crap shoot.
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