Health Care

Gender Prison: Vermont steps up

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It seems like only a couple of weeks since California became the third state, after Colorado and Oregon, to require health insurers to cover the medical needs of transgender residents of the state. Oh, hey, it wasjust two weeks ago.

On April 22 Vermont's Department of Financial Regulation's Division of Insurance issued a new health bulletin which requires insurance companies wishing to do business in the state to cover "medically necessary services" for all transgender residents. That includes sex reassignment surgery.

DFR is committed to ensuring that Vermonters do not face discrimination in accessing medically necessary health care benefits, including those based on gender identity and gender dysphoria.

This is both a simple question of fairness and a matter addressed by existing insurance law and DFR regulation.

--DFR Insurance Bulletin 174 (pdf)

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Gender Prison: Lives will be saved

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California's Department of Managed Healh Care (DMHC) issued guidelines last Tuesday to implement the state's Insurance Discrimination Act of 2006 with regards to transgender people.

Funny thing: the state is insisting that INDA 2006 applies to us as well as other people.

This is an important step in protecting the health of all Californians, including transgender individuals. No Californian should be denied care and treatment because of their gender identity or expression. Implementation of California’s Insurance Gender Non-Discrimination Act (IGNA) is a simple matter of fairness and equality in health care.

--California Assembly Speaker John Pérez

The guidelines can be simply stated:

If an insurance company authorizes a treatment for non-transgender individuals, it needs to extend that same doctor-perscribed treatment to the trans community.

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Senator Bernie Sanders - Daily News

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Doctor Crisis
[Daily News]

“We need many thousands of new primary care doctors now and, by some accounts, 50,000 more within a decade. But the deck is stacked against a big increase, given medical school cultures that push students toward specialization; a system in which Medicare sets the baseline for doctors’ pay; and a federally-mandated limit on medical residents positions since 1997,” according to Sunday’s New York Daily News. “It’s a wildly irrational system,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said. “We do not need more specialists. We need primary care physicians in rural and poor urban areas, not on Park Avenue.” Sanders chairs a Senate committee on primary health care.

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Health Alert: Meningitis Outbreak in NYC Among Gay Men

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A health alert has been issued by the New York City Health Department warning of an outbreak of deadly new strain of bacterial meningitis among gay men. They are recommending all gay men, regardless of HIV status get a vaccination.

Health Department Issues New Vaccination Recommendations for Men at Greatest Risk for Contracting Meningitis

Four new cases of meningitis among men who have sex with men have been reported in 2013. Three of the last five cases have been fatal.

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Investigating medical malfeascance

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The General Medical Council is investigating London-based gender-change specialist Dr. Richard Curtis after three complaints have surfaced.

One patient complained about regretting undergoing treatment after taking hormones and having a double mastectomy. A second accusation is that Dr. Curtis prescribed drugs to patients under the age of 18 without the requisite specialist knowledge.

Dr Curtis is also accused of failing to follow acceptable levels of care and breached conditions placed on his practice by the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), the GMC’s arm’s-length disciplinary body.

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Gender Prison: Oregon raises the bar on equal medical care

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By "healthcare", of course, we use the modern definition: insurance coverage.

The Oregon Insurance Division of the Department of Consumer and Business Services issued a bulletin last month adding transgender people to the list of those who may not be discriminated against.

In 2007 the Oregon state legislature passed a law (SB 2) prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. This new measure restricts insurance companies from denying medical and health care coverage to transpeople as laid out by SB 2.

And it only took 5 years to do that.

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Mental Illness: A Cause Near and Dear to Me

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This is actually a revision to a post i first wrote back in 2007, but it's still just as pertinent (and pretty much unlearned) today as it was then and always has been... Also, to be clear, it's going to take a lot of things to help prevent the now seemingly constant shootings we have here, including smart and serious gun control laws being enforced, better mental health awareness and parity, and perhaps even looking at our culture as a whole. I am only addressing that which has directly affected my life.

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Texas to Deny Healthcare to Thousands of Poor Women

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Court upholds legality of Texas’ defunding of Planned Parenthood.

On October 25, 2012 the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused Planned Parenthood’s request to rehear a case that will allow Texas to deny the organization State funding under the new Texas Women’s Health Program. In August, a three judge panel representing the 5th Circuit Court ruled that Texas could deny funding to Planned Parenthood. Lawyers representing Planned Parenthood appealed the panel’s decision and requested an en banc hearing before the court. An en banc hearing means that the court’s judges would rule on the case, instead of a panel as was done in August. The court’s refusal to hear the case en banc means that effective November 1, 2012 Texas will no longer provide funding to Planned Parenthood.

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