Last week, citing "ample evidence that there continues to be a persistent problem with discrimination in the health care industry" the Obama administration
proposed new regulations to ban discrimination against trangender people. Mother Jones
reports on some of that evidence.
In a recent survey of transgender men and women by the National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 19 percent of people polled reported that someone refused them medical care because of their gender identity. Twenty-eight percent had postponed medical care because of discrimination, and half reported that they had to explain transgender health issues to their own doctors. These practices have contributed to disproportionately negative health outcomes for transgender people compared with the general population, such as staggering rates of depression, suicide, and HIV. […]
Thirty-seven-year-old Seth Marlow's medical history reads like a catalog of such abuses. Marlow works in health care IT and is well connected in transgender advocacy circles. But even he has struggled to get basic medical care. At one point, Marlow says, he was unable to have routine blood work done because a doctor he visited said his Christian faith prevented him from treating Marlow. His previous insurance company refused to pay for a fertility clinic to extract and freeze his eggs—which was one of the insurer's covered benefits—seemingly because he identified as a man.
"As much as there's this great transgender tipping point," Marlow says. "I still can't get health care."
One of the issues is that, while Obamacare banned sex discrimination by insurers and healthcare providers, "discrimination" wasn't specifically spelled out to include transgender and the issues specific to their care, leaving the definition up to the states to determine in their enforcement of the regulations. Most states haven't enacted protections for transgender people under the law. In Virginia, where Marlow now lives, he can't get the hormone treatment he needs covered, despite the fact that the insurer covers it for non-transgender people and he can't get coverage for an annual pelvic exam and pap smear which he still needs because he still has those parts.
"I'm so jaded and so tired that it's hard to believe this is going to make any difference," Marlow says of the new rules. "There's a little progress. But it's painfully, gruelingly slow." This is forward motion, and it's a presidential administration making it a specific priority. Enforcement in all the states will still be an issue, but it's not a hidden problem anymore.