I feel those who were willing to put their life on the line for their country should have proper healthcare for the rest of their life.
How many years has this been going on… even one year is much too long.
Let us make that all veterans get all the healthcare that they need.
NBC News wrote,Transgender Veterans Sue to Force VA to Cover Gender-Affirmation Surgeries
Military.com
By Rebecca Kheel
April 15, 2024A group of transgender veterans is renewing its legal fight with the Department of Veterans Affairs over the VA's lack of coverage for gender-affirmation surgeries.
The Transgender American Veterans Association, or TAVA, filed a lawsuit Monday in federal court seeking to compel the VA to cover the surgeries, its second lawsuit this year related to the issue.
"Every day of transgender veterans being denied this care increases the distress of gender dysphoria that is plaguing our community, and lifesaving, doctor-prescribed, transition-related health care is incredibly vital to the life satisfaction of veterans in our community," Josie Caballero, acting president of TAVA, told Military.com in a phone interview Monday.
"We're hoping that this lawsuit provides more hope for transgender veterans to know that something's going to move, something's got to give," Caballero added.
In his letter denying TAVA’s petition, Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said the recently enacted PACT Act — a 2022 law that expands health care benefits for veterans exposed to burn pits, Agent Orange and other toxic substances — will necessitate that the VA produce and collect new information that might require the department to submit new data on a proposed rule to cover gender-affirming surgeries.
“Because VA is not ready at this time to initiate a rulemaking addressing the specific regulatory changes proposed in the petition, VA hereby denies the petition for rulemaking,” McDonough wrote in his letter to the Transgender Law Center attorneys representing TAVA, which was shared with NBC News.
[…]
Josie Caballero, the acting president of TAVA, said her initial reaction to the VA’s rejection of TAVA’s petition for rulemaking was shock and then disappointment, because the VA has promised for years to cover gender-affirming care for trans veterans.
For example, in June 2021, McDonough announced that the department was “taking the first necessary steps to expand VA’s care to include gender confirmation surgery,” which he said would take time, CNN reported then.
“But we are moving ahead, methodically, because we want this important change in policy to be implemented in a manner that has been thoroughly considered to ensure that the services made available to veterans meet VA’s rigorous standards of quality health care,” McDonough said at the time.
[...]
“We just want the VA to keep its promises — the promise of health care, the promise of being able to live with dignity and have our health care provided because we fought, we put our bodies on the line,” she said. “This is the least that this country can provide for us. And the VA should not be a barrier to providing lifesaving health care.”
Let us make that all veterans get all the healthcare that they need.
According to the VA fact sheets on gender identity care the VA offers counseling, hormone treatment and prosthetics. I use the VA health care system. If the VA does not have the expertise in treating an illness or injury the VA routinely pays for outside the system are. It is probably easy to conceal counseling, hormone medications and prosthetics as a budgetary line item, but to pay for surgery at an outside provider is not something that would go unnoticed by certain members of Congress. I'd say it falls into the same category of trying to use federal dollars for abortion services.
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