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Jilly_in_VA

(9,941 posts)
Thu Sep 23, 2021, 12:25 PM Sep 2021

Doctors say trans people need these surgeries. Insurance companies don't always agree.

Alejandra Caraballo, 30, spent three years and countless hours after work — which “felt like a second part-time job” at times — putting together hundreds of documents to get her health insurance to cover her facial feminization surgery.

She even planned to sue her nonprofit employer, the New York Legal Assistance Group, or NYLAG, and the insurance company it used, UnitedHealthcare, in the spring of 2019 for denying the coverage.

“My own clients at NYLAG were getting it covered under Medicaid, no issue,” she said. “And I, having private insurance, was having it consistently denied and, not to mention, working at a place that prides itself on inclusion and diversity and being social justice-oriented in terms of providing direct legal services to low-income New Yorkers.”

She said that she had lobbied for policy change but that when she met with NYLAG’s general counsel, she was told that the organization didn’t view the explicit exclusions for certain gender-affirming operations and voice therapy for transgender people as discrimination.

“It felt really invalidating and just like I wasn’t being heard,” she said, adding that she is a lawyer who knows the case law that affects the issue.

https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-health-and-wellness/transgender-people-report-years-battles-health-insurance-coverage-rcna2145
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Health iunsurance companies are of the devil. I know. I used to deal with them as a case manager.

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Doctors say trans people need these surgeries. Insurance companies don't always agree. (Original Post) Jilly_in_VA Sep 2021 OP
On one level, it looks like typically mean spirited insurance company cost cutting, but ... Passenger Sep 2021 #1
 

Passenger

(217 posts)
1. On one level, it looks like typically mean spirited insurance company cost cutting, but ...
Fri Sep 24, 2021, 11:14 AM
Sep 2021

Although the story does not mention any such thing, am I being paranoid when I seem to perceive the dead hand of religion?

Latest Discussions»Alliance Forums»LGBT»Doctors say trans people ...