I have to respectfully disagree about coverage being reversed. The coverage came about on an appeal for coverage, I believe in Arizona. The government lost on the appeal by board that recognized that SRS and other related care is not experimental, has proven effective and does meet a real need. Reimbursement amounts are another issue we in the hospital industry face. The fact is that there is a limited number of physicians who do provide these services and therefore can charge what the market will bear. I would love to find a physician who does quality SRS and introduce them to our hospital management. As we see greater acceptance of transsexual individuals by society, we are also seeing greater numbers coming out of the closet in the older years and we are seeing many more younger people, with the support of their parents seeking trans-related care. I think we are going to see a greater need for physicians providing these surgeries. I believe there are now 5 states that mandate insurance coverage and I'm going to guess that as with the growing number of states with Same Sex Marriage, more states, as the recognize the need for trans-gender health services, will mandate expansion of coverage. Again, this will fuel the need for more physicians.
What can we do? The chances of getting Medicare to increase rates is unlikely as quite a bit of Medicare money was moved to fund expansion of Obamacare. We can gather the facts much as we do here about the numbers of suicide attempts, 41% as we seen reported here, explain the pain and suffering that those who suffer from GD endure and lobby the state governors and insurance boards to expand coverage. Yes many would like to transition and go stealth, there are others like Kate Bornstein and others who are activists for transgender rights. We also need to educate the public that transgender health services, SRS and FFS, while seemingly cosmetic surgeries, can be needed life saving interventions.
I'll get off my soapbox now but hopefully there a few ideas that might inspire some people to action. The only reason I found out about the Medicare change was that I was trying to get a petition going on the We the People White House website and unfortunately I couldn't get more than a few people to sign on, even from the other forum I used to frequent. I had put it out in May and found that Medicare had just lost the appeal and the Trans-woman in Arizona, I believe, was going to have her surgery covered. Now, who did the surgery, or was there a doctor who accepted the Medicare reimbursement? I don't know.
