Man-Made Deserts.

If you happen to be in one of these deserts what do you do? Where do you go to get medical treatment?

“Where Is There to Go?” He Needs Gender-Affirming Surgery, but His State Is Fighting to Deny Coverage.
A North Carolina policy that denies state employees coverage for gender-affirming care has been on hold pending appeal. For one transgender worker still awaiting surgery, the anxiety is “like somebody has got their hands around my neck.”
ProPublica
By Aliyya Swaby
September 14, 2023

In the spring of 2022, Hann Henson accepted a job as a communications specialist for a North Carolina school district. Not long after his insurance kicked in, he pored over the hundred-page booklet outlining the state health plan for district employees.

When he came to the list of services that aren’t covered, he paused at a tiny footnote: North Carolina’s plan did currently pay for gender-affirming care — but only because of a temporary federal court order.

[…]

Henson had grown accustomed to state leaders and insurance plans playing political tug of war with his rights. In 2016, early in his transition, a Republican governor signed into law the country’s first statewide ban on transgender people using the bathroom aligned with their gender — forcing Henson to worry about violence from strangers when entering public restrooms. A Democratic governor largely scrapped it a year later. Henson spent the next several years jumping through every hoop his insurance company required before it would cover one of his transition-related surgeries, with a representative at one point telling him the company didn’t cover “tranny health care.”

Right now the courts have froze North Carolina from denying us insurance coverage.

A few days after Folwell’s interview, Henson learned that the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Virginia, would hear arguments on the case in late September. It was far from the ideal time: His surgery was scheduled for late November, and he’d need a follow-up surgery about six months later.

We shouldn’t be treated like pawns in a political chess game, we are human beings with our rights! We shouldn't be forced to travel or move to get proper medical treatment!