Mayor: City Should Start Paying for Surgeries and Other Treatments for Transgender Employees
Posted by Dominic Holden on Mon, May 9, 2011 at 10:49 AM
http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/05/09/mayor-city-should-start-paying-for-surgeries-and-other-treatments-for-transgender-employees (http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2011/05/09/mayor-city-should-start-paying-for-surgeries-and-other-treatments-for-transgender-employees)
When most of the city's approximately 10,000 employees seek mental health care, steroid treatments, or a variety of other services, they don't need to prove medical necessity to be covered under the city's employee benefits plan. But once an employee has been classified by the city's insurance carrier as transgender, those services are "universally denied," says the Seattle LGBT Commission in a letter to city officials. "First and foremost, transgender medical treatment is not cosmetic. It is necessary medical treatment. Psychological care, hormonal treatments, and surgical procedures are all medically necessary for transgender-identified individuals."
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"This is something we should be working to improve," says McGinn, who only learned about the exclusions last Thursday. "This is not frivolous issue. It's a fundamental issue about the effect on a person's physical and emotional well-being, and this exclusion means that you are denying appropriate health services to people when they are in need."