On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, David Strand wrote:
> Recently San Francisco, CA expanded health care
> coverage for city employees to cover expenses related
> to transitioning gender. Does Minneapolis' health
> care package for employees already cover such
> expenses?
An interesting question! As a matter of fact, most HMO's have a specific
exception in their policies for the express reason of excluding the
coverage of costs for gender identity disphoria/disorder (GID) treatment.
The reasons for this exception are a bit murky, but relate to lawsuits in
decades past.
>From end-to-end, a 'transition' can cost anywhere between $70,000 to
$150,000. That includes the therepy, surgery, legal costs associated with
the changing of expressed gender, and other costs (electrolysis of beard
(Male to Female), voice-training, hormones...) . I believe the San
Francisco benefit has an upper-limit of $60,000. It does not cover the
full costs, but definately helps.
In order for Minneapolis to provide this benefit, the City would have to
administer the program themselves. This, as an an employee of a large
city myself, is probably the largest road-block in getting this
benefit. The City's Risk Management office would have to directly manage
this program, something they're probably not used to in this age of HMO's.
> Minneapolis was the first city in the U.S. to provide protection from
> discrimination on the basis of gender identity/expression in 1974.
> Minnesota became the first state to do so in 1993. This provision is
> included under the definitions of sexual orientation/preference in the
> statutes.
For which Minneapolis has something of a name within the TG community.
Now if only we could get the State to include gender identity/expression
in the statutes.
> As a historic leader on issues of bias against
> transgendered persons, it seems Minneapolis would
> understand the special needs of transexuals and others
> need for gender identity related medical care. Does
> anyone know the city's policy on this issue?
I'm also curious as to how many 'out' transexuals the City has. I know
Saint Paul has at least two, which would imply that Minneapolis probably
has 3-4.
Michael Hohmann mentioned that such a program would be unaffordable in the
City's current financial climate. The number of people seaking
gender-identity related medical care is quite small in a population as
small as that of City employees. The transition process, for those who
seak to fully change their gender, takes a few years; and with a
population as small as City employees, it is unlikely that there will be
more than one person transitioning at a time.
There are also people who seak gender identity help who do not plan on
fully transitioning to the other gender. Perhaps all they need is a good
therepist. Or perhaps just the hormones themselves give enough of a
semblance of the body they need that they do not feel the need to go for
surgery. Or even, just voice-training and cross-dressing 24x7 are all
that is needed. The treatments are varied. The City sending a message
that the exception the HMO's have for GID-treatment is discriminatory
would be a very nice step.
Greg Riedesel
SSP
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