I just wanted to share my story and tell everyone about the greatest news of my life! My insurance authorization came through for my FFS the other day and I can now schedule my surgery! It has taken me more than a year now to get everything worked out but they are paying for the entire surgery 100% with no deductibles and no out-of-pocket-maximum. I could not be happier
The last 3 years of transition have been really hard on me as I really need FFS to be able to pass and I had no way of coming up with the kind of money that I needed for the surgery. Its hard to come up with that kind of money in Hawaii for anything other than a place to live! Then about year ago I found out that my husbands employer offered transgender benefits. The only problem was that nobody in the benefits center knew anything about these benefits and so we spent 2 or 3 months just trying to find someone in the company that knew how we could access them. Apparently since I live in Hawaii my husbands employer could not offer the same type of insurance (UHC) to us as they do their employees on the mainland since Hawaii has strict rules governing insurance policies here. So the transgender benefits were offered through UHC but my husband and I had insurance policies through a local company. Well my husbands employer, being as awesome as they are, didn't want employees in Hawaii to miss out on accessing those types of benefits. So they were still offering transgender related coverage to us but it just had to be through UHC on the mainland. That is where the problem started. We were the first people in the company from Hawaii to try to access those benefits since they started offering them 3 years before. So nobody had a clue... Well after many, many phone calls, we finally reached somebody who could give us some information. They actually had to have a team of lawyers work on this for about a month before they finally concluded that it was not possible for them to charge us two deductibles and two different out-of-pocket-maximum's legally. So while employees on the mainland had to pay a $2500 deductible and a $8500 out-of-pocket-maximum to access transgender surgeries, it was decided that employees in Hawaii would not have to pay those. So even though it took just over a year, it all worked out for the better. I have a lifetime max of $75,000 and I get $25,000 for travel and I hear it is going up to $100,000 next year. They are covering every single one of my FFS procedures which includes: Type III forehead reconstruction, Scalp advancement, Brow lift, Rhinoplasty, Mandible reduction/shave, Sliding Genioplasty, Lip advancement, Reduction of the Zygomatic arch and reducing the actual body of the Zygoma. The whole thing is taking place in a really nice hospital with a private room! Well worth all the down days I had trying to figure this stuff out!
