Healthy SF to Remove Trans Exclusionsby Cynthia Laird
Bay Area Reporter
Thursday Jul 19, 2012
http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=67879Supervisor Scott Wiener and transgender leaders ... Monday... said that city officials are expected to soon sign off on the changes that would allow sexual reassignment services, treatment, and surgery to be covered for transgender patients just as they are now for non-trans patients.
Wiener introduced a resolution at Tuesday's board meeting calling on the health department to "provide medically necessary transition-related care for transgender people and to remove exclusions under the San Francisco Health Care Security Ordinance," or Healthy SF.
[It] noted the "insignificant" cost of removing the exclusions and that inclusion "in fact provides cost savings as well as significant benefits for the health, welfare, and safety of the transgender population," according to a California Department of Insurance study of actuarial data of five employers, including the city of San Francisco.
Barbara Garcia, the director of the Department of Public Health [said] her agency is committed to the changes, but that it would take another year to year and a half before the administrative steps are implemented...
Healthy SF is the city's locally designed and funded universal health care program that was launched in 2007.
