Hizzhonor
Posted on 08/22/2019 10:22:09 AM PDT by jazusamo
An Obama-appointed federal judge is forcing Wisconsin taxpayers to provide costly sex reassignment surgery and hormonal procedures for low-income transgender residents who get free medical care from the government. In a recently issued ruling U.S. District Judge William M. Conley writes that Medicaid, the publicly funded insurance that covers 65.7 million poor people, cannot deny the medical treatment needs of those suffering from “gender dysphoria.” Officials estimate it will cost up to $1.2 million annually to provide transgender Medicaid recipients in the Badger State with treatments such as “gender confirmation” surgery, including elective mastectomies, hysterectomies, genital reconstruction and breast augmentation. The intricate operations are typically done by plastic surgeons.
The ruling culminates a lawsuit filed more than a year ago by two transgender Wisconsinites, who accuse the federal and state-funded insurance program of providing them with disparate and inferior health care on the basis of sex. Cody Flack of Green Bay and Sara Makenzie of Baraboo say they suffer from severe gender dysphoria that requires costly surgery. Flack, a woman, claims to be ashamed of her breasts and wants to have them surgically removed as she transitions into a man’s body. To make a case for the government to pay for her surgery, she claims that she engages in “binding,” which flattens her breasts and causes sores, skin irritation and respiratory distress. Flack also has difficulty binding her breasts due to a disability, according to court documents . Makenzie, a man who legally changed his name to Sara and wears women’s clothing, says his “male-appearing genitalia” causes him “great distress” and negatively affects his sexuality and social life. Showering and seeing his body in a mirror is “painful,” court records state, and Makenzie fears someone will be able to see his “male genitals” through his clothing.
Last summer Judge Conley issued a preliminary injunction ordering Wisconsin to cover sex reassignment surgery for Flack and Makenzie while state health officials appealed. The permanent ruling directing the state-federal insurance for the poor to pay for all gender confirmation operations in the state was issued last week. To lay the foundation, Conley writes in the injunction that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition, which if left untreated can cause adverse symptoms. “As a group, transgender individuals have been subjected to harassment and discrimination in virtually every aspect of their lives, including in housing, employment, education, and health care,” according to the document. “Their own families, acquaintances and larger communities can be sources of harassment. For some transgender individuals, though certainly not all, the dissonance between their gender identity and their naturally assigned sex can manifest itself in the form of gender dysphoria, a serious medical condition recognized by both sides’ experts and the larger medical community as a whole.”
Though Medicaid initially denied Flack’s chest reconstructive surgery, it was eventually completed at taxpayer expense after the judge’s injunction. A plastic surgeon performed a double mastectomy and male chest construction last fall. “Following the surgery, Cody’s gender dysphoria was greatly diminished,” according to Conley’s final ruling, because his “outward appearance matched his male gender” and he “would no longer be misgendered because of his breasts.” Makenzie got a bilateral orchiectomy and vaginoplasty to create “female appearing external genitalia” after the judge determined that the surgeries are medically necessary. Because Medicaid refused to cover chest reconstruction surgery prior to the lawsuit, Makenzie obtained a personal loan to pay a plastic surgeon at the University of Wisconsin Hospital for the operation in 2016. Court documents say Makenzie contends that the surgery helped alleviate his gender dysphoria.
In his decision, Judge Conley cites guidelines issued by the World Professional Association of Transgender Health to treat transsexual, transgender and gender nonconforming people. Treatments include psychotherapy, hormone therapy and “a number of surgical procedures” to eliminate the development of unwanted secondary sex characteristics of the assigned sex, develop secondary sex characteristics of the sex associated with the patient’s gender identity and enhance the patient’s ability to “pass” as the sex associated with the patient’s gender identity to decrease harassment, mistreatment and other forms of discrimination.
KEEP VOTING DEMOCRAT SENIORS.
That’s just insane..
But then again, so was letting an ineligible into the White House to make appointments to the bench.
The founders specified NATURAL BORN CITIZEN.
The children of foreign nationals are PRECISELY who the founders were excluding.
Personnel stuff you pay for ,not the Government
This makes me so angry. My brother had “good” health insurance through the big corporation he worked for. When he got cancer, he had to fight the insurance company to approve and pay for the treatments his doctors recommended. These were treatments to try to save his life. But we taxpayers are made to pay for elective surgeries that cost tens of thousands of dollars each.
Psychiatric help, yes.
Surgical mutilation of insane people, no.
Next it will be mandatory
This is insane. If he wants gender surgery he/she can pay for it.
It's a fraud and this idiot judge has been duped. With some luck, it will be overturned on appeal.
In this case it's about money and influence. The doctor is very powerful.
Bump!
The judge must be a refugee from the Ninth Circuit. He’ll be overturned. But if I were the GOP I’d put the Dems on the hot seat by making them vote on a statutory fix.
I’ll bet illegal aliens are next up.
5.56mm
That is an elective surgery.
It is not a pure health issue.
There’s no way this should be funded by medicaid payments.
If it is, then ALL elective cosmetic surgery should be.
NO!
I think the medical research is pretty clear, that these are cases that require intensive psychiatric counseling, as the surgery resolves nothing, in fact makes the condition worse.
IMO this is identical to having a cosmetic procedure.
Take it to a higher court!
Amen!
That is some horse crap
I should have to pay for this for some mental sicko?
Oh hell no
Some judges deserve public stocks and garbage tossed at em
hmmm, so if i wanted to be handsome, and I falsely “Identified as” a handsome person in need of surgery- expensive cosmetic surgery, then medicaid must be forced to pay for that too simply because i identify as something I’m not?
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