Posted on 05/30/2009 6:08:49 PM PDT by cradle of freedom
Just wondering how those people who decide they want to change there sex get the money to pay for what must be very expensive proceedures and operations? Does Medicaid pay for this?
On the Laura Ingraham show this week, she spoke of a case of an 8 year old boy who goes to a Catholic school who says that he wants to be a girl. The parents say that he has wanted to be a girl since he was 2 years old. The parents say that they have been to professionals who are helping him to "transition."
Many questions come to mind such as what did those parents do to the kid to make him turn against his own masculinity. The next question is who are these professionals who are advising this kid and his family? Is there some gay/transexual pipeline of counselors who find confused people (even little kids!) and then pass them along to some unscrupulous surgeons who will be all to eager to do the operations for the money.
This is where the question about Medicaid comes in. Where are these people getting the money to perform long, complicated and expensive proceedures when many don't have insurance for real, necessary procedures? Does Medicaid pay for this and does private insurance pay for this?
It makes you also question the morals and ethics of people who would counsel anyone, especially an eight year old boy, to mutilate their bodies to fit some unfortunate delusion that they have about themselves. Is there anyone out there who would counsel these people to NOT mutilate there bodies? Is there anyone in the medical community who would recommend that they get psychiatric counseling to accept who they really are rather than destroying their bodies?
Do you think you smell a rat? I do. I think there must be a network of unscrupulous counselors and surgeons who perform these abominations. Maybe it is similar to those ambulance chasers who have doctors and chiropractors that they shop their patients to in order to milk the insurance companies for all they can get. I think that desreputable counselors and pychiatrists tell these confused people that they really are women in mens bodies then pass them on to these butchers who make a lot of money of these proceedures.
Once these parents had turned him against his masculinity, why did they go along with the idea of mutilating their own child? This is sick.
At eight years old, you don't really know yet that Transformers aren't real, that Tyrannosaurus Rex hasn't been brought back to life, and that Ben 10 can't really be all those lifeforms.
Maybe you can just be the sex you are, and yet you can buy a nice Toyota Solara and eat vegetables. It's a decent compromise. You are a boy. Deal with it.
Medicaid has been paying for sex-change operations for the indigent in NY for years.
Or is that a conservative urban legend?
Its called “sex reassignment surgery” and the answer is: yes, it does.
Absolutely, at least they do so in Pennsylvania.
Transexualism is considered to be a medical disorder, and a sex change operation is recognized as an appropriate treatment.
There are municipalities that pay for this insanity. Further, I read somewhere a while back that the prison system in California pays for “gender reassignment surgery” for inmates as well... don’t know if that is correct - but if it is - I hope California rots in their collapsing budget.
Unbelievable that it’s covered by medical insurance.
I can’t get my arms around the idea of an 8 year old boy undergoing this surgery. I guess I’m just not liberal and open minded. I don’t know what to say about an adult making an informed decision. But some lines clearly should be drawn. An 8 year old is way too young to even consider such surgery. His parents are guilty of child abuse in my opinion. If the parents weren’t enabling him, there’s no way an 8 year old could even conceive of any of this trans-sex whatever the official name of it is.
Does anyone here really believe that a child who hasn’t yet even gone through puberty has any concept of sexuality in the first place? And if they don’t have any concept of sexuality, how the heck can they be convinced that they are a girl in a boy’s body and all that??????
I would love to know how this developed. When the parents began to see that the boy wanted to be a girl, did they take him to a pediatrician? What did the pediatrician say? This is really disturbing to think that this little kid (and the parents) were not given another choice. Isn’t there anyone out there who would work with this family to help restore this boy to his true identity. I feel that someone robbed this boy of his life.
My 4 year old girl wants to be a butterfly. Should I take her to a doctor to get wings surgically implanted? Geez. Little kids want to be LOTS of things.
Yes, and then call the ACLU so they can help your daughter sue you for anti-Lepidopteran-American prejudice. /s
I wanted to be a bear. What kind of surgery can I get?
At about 60,000 to 100,000 a pop...your tax money
New York State had 211 Sex Reassignments done in 2007 and
thousands of partial assignments at 25,000 to 50,000 each.
Want to be a bear... be a grizzly!
“In a 1998 survey by the State of Iowa 40 other states responded that they did not provide coverage for sex reassignment surgery. “
While many state Medicaid programs have historically excluded coverage of transition related procedures through state regulations or practice, such blanket exclusions have often, but not always, been struck down by administrative judges and/or courts. Most of these have been “related procedures”, such as treatment of broken legs claimed to have been the result of hormone treatments causing osteopororis, treatment of injuries from assaults due to anti-transgender bias, and reconstructive breast surgery after mastectomy in the case of breast cancer..
Over 95% of health insurance policies specifically exclude sex reassignment surgery. Medicare Blue in Illinois (health insurer of last resort) recently dropped their coverage when they found out that none of the other insurers in that state provided it.
Costs vary - $30,000 is about standard for male to female in the USA, but the most experienced surgeons with lowest complication rates overseas cost $15,000 or less. Cost for female to male varies from $30,000 for a single-stage metoidaplasty to $120,000 for a 12-stage full phalloplasty. This is not popular due to the 70% failure rate.
Oddly enough, the major cost in male to female transition is usually facial hair removal using electrolysis (500-750 hours at $60 an hour) and facial feminisation surgery, re-constructing the skull. That costs anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000.
None of that is covered by any insurance policy.
You see, according to the New York Law School:
In 1997, however, the New York State Department of Health published a notice proposing a regulation terminating Medicaid payment for any treatment supporting gender transition. After an extended period for public comment, the regulation was adopted providing that “payment is not available for the care, services, drugs or supplies rendered for the purpose of gender reassignment (also known as transsexual surgery) or any care, services, drugs or supplies intended to promote such treatment.” ... U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel ruled on August 5 in Casillas v. Daines, 2008 Westlaw 3157825 (S.D.N.Y.), that New York State’s adoption and enforcement of a regulation adopted by the Pataki Administration prohibiting the use of Medicaid funds to pay for sex reassignment treatment does not violate the constitutional right to Equal Protection of the law, and that an individual whose coverage for hormone treatment that had been provided for almost a quarter century until they were cut off by adoption of this regulation has no legal claim against the state for violating her rights to continued Medicaid coverage to maintain her feminine body characteristics..211 sounds mighty high too, given that it's estimated only about 1000 such operations occur in the US annually, with another 2000 on US citizens overseas or in Canada.
In the US, 3 specialist surgeons (none in New York State) account for 50% of such operations, with another 20 performing no more than one a month.
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