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Aug 4, 2009
As the Diane Schroer video shows, transgender people face alot of discrimination. This discrimination places transgender people at a higher risk for being victims of violence and hate crimes but also at a higher risk for health disparities. According to the Human Rights Council, a transgender person has a 1/12 chance of being murdered whereas the average person has a 1/18,000 chance of being murdered. Transgender people also face disparities in employment, although improvements will be made if the Employee Non Discrimination Act (EDNA) is passed. Campus Progress.org describes the healthcare discrimination transgender people face quite succintly:
Transgender individuals with access to health insurance can rarely find coverage that fully meets their health care needs. Most insurance plans, both private and public, do not cover the costs associated with transitioning, or moving from one gender to another. This leads many transgender people—especially low-income people—to seek out ways to transition outside of a medical context.
Some insurance plans interpret their regulations on transition costs very broadly. They refuse any medical procedure where hormone use or past surgeries are relevant, even procedures as generic as allergy tests. There is also evidence that insurance companies use a history of transition treatments as a reason to deny coverage. The Transgender Law Center has even found examples where insurance companies have denied coverage for a broken arm and flu treatment to transgender individuals, claiming the treatment was related to transition.
Transgender people deserve access to care and physician’s should be trained on transgender health. Here is an example from the Human Rights Coalition about the problems that poorly trained physician’s can cause:
For example, female-to-male transsexual Robert Eads of rural Georgia developed cervical cancer but could not find a doctor to treat him. Twenty simply refused. He eventually found one more than 130 miles from home, but by then, Eads’ partner said, it was “just too late.” He died in 1999. .
The American Medical Association (AMA) came out with a statement that they support healthcare coverage for transgender individuals. I agree with this statement, I believe that transgender individuals should have a right to health care procedures related to gender identity disoder, including gender reassignment surgery.
Transgender health should be covered under any reforms to the US healthcare system. I do not agree with those who believe that transgender health should not be covered but cosmetic surgery or viagra pills should.
Even more important is the fatal consequences of not covering transgender health. There is a black market of low-cost surgeries performed for transgender people in often unsanitary conditions in the US and in other countries. Perhaps the most notorious of these surgeons was Dr. John Ronald Brown. Known as "Butcher Brown" in some communities this doctor lost his medical license many times for performing unsafe surgeries, particularly to transgender people with no other alternatives. According to the Book, How Sex Changed by Joanne Meyerowitz:
He performed surgery under unsanitary conditions on kitchen tables and in hotel rooms. He purposely damaged the vagina of a MTF [(Male to Female)] who angered him and he left an FTM [(Female to Male)] with gaping wounds after a botched masectomy. He let his business partner, Andrew James Spence, who was not a doctor perform surgery…"
We can not leave transgender health in the hands of people like Dr. John Brown. Transgender people have a human right to be recieve affordable health care by reputable doctors in cleanly facilities.