It was described as a victory on another news site, but it’s not what the Ridgeview News will ever describe as a win for the State of West Virginia or any other State in the United States of America.
Following a federal judge’s decision (see link below) low-income transgender citizens in West Virginia will soon be able to receive gender-conforming surgical care on the America’s dollar.
Following a class action filed by Christopher Fain on behalf of 600 transgender residents against the Department of Health and Human Resources, challenging the Department’s Bureau of Medical Services’ blanket exclusion of coverage for surgical care as treatment for gender dysphoria in its Medicaid and State employee health insurance plans, U.S. District Judge Robert Chambers found that the WVDHHR’s exclusion was unconstitutional and granted the lawsuit class action status.
The Complaint stated that the exclusion for ”transsexual surgery” regardless of medical necessity violated the plaintiffs’ rights of equal protection under the 14th Amendment. In his 30-page opinion, Chambers said WVDHHR facially discriminates against transgender residents by excluding them medically necessary surgeries afforded to other Medicaid recipients:
Nonetheless, the policy does cover other treatments related to transgender healthcare. The policy covers psychiatric diagnosis evaluation, psychotherapy, psychological evaluation, counseling, office visits, hormones, and lab work when medically necessary even if the treatments are related to gender-confirming care. Tr. of Proceedings, ECF No. 269, at 32–33; see Beane Tr., ECF No. 250-13, at 5, 50. Transgender individuals are covered for the same care as cisgender individuals when such treatment is not the surgical treatment for gender dysphoria.
The transsexual surgery was compared to being as needed in as compared to the necessity of medically necessary mastectomies for non gender dysphoria related diagnoses. Such as Cancer! According to the Judge’s decision it stated
For example, there “is a wide range of indications or techniques used to perform mastectomy, whether for gender-affirming mastectomy or for a mastectomy pertaining to oncologic reasons or for risk reduction mastectomies, meaning removing a breast that is not cancerous but may have an increased predilection or risk of breast [cancer.]” Id. at 40. However, the “technical act of a mastectomy” can be performed to treat both a non-gender dysphoria related diagnosis and a gender dysphoria related diagnosis. Id. Based on the expert opinion of Dr. Schechter, this Court finds that a surgery, such as a mastectomy, for a gender dysphoria diagnosis and the same surgery for a non-gender dysphoria diagnosis, are not materially different.
Chambers stated that in “Looking to the language of the exclusion it is clear that the exclusion discriminates on its face. The exclusion denies coverage for ‘transsexual surgery.’ This language refers explicitly to sex — one seeking a “transsexual surgery” seeks to change from their sex assigned at birth to the sex that more accurately reflects their gender identify.”
While Ridgeview News professes no medical knowledge whatsoever there are those who do have the expertise in the field and have questioned the validity of such decisions.
An article posted by NIH at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6020665/ stated the argument:
Treatment of gender dysphoria always raised numerous ethical issues, and with rapid acknowledgment and recent achievements, new complex issues in medical management have emerged. With unknown etiology and questionable definition (mental/medical illness, social construct, and variation of sex) who can decide, with 100% certainty, what treatment is in the best interest of a particular patient? The most prominent challenges and ethical questions pertain to the treatment of underage individuals, fertility after GAS, and possibility of regret after GAS. Main ethical principles are autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and informed consent. The individual must have autonomy of thought and intention when making decisions about medical treatment. This is an especially sensitive field in treatment of gender dysphoria, because sometimes the individual’s desires, hopes, and expectations might not correlate with reality. Experts must be very straightforward regarding specific possibilities, risks, and benefits of medical treatment, especially considering that the last step in medical transition, GAS, is irreversible. Beneficence implies doing only good, only what is in the patient’s best interest. However, some may consider that surgical alteration of healthy organs, in case of GAS, is not in line with this principle. Nonmaleficence must ensure that the treatment does not harm the individual in an emotional, social, or physical sense. Always keeping these principles in mind, WPATH Standards of Care and criteria for diagnosis might not be enough to be ascertain that we are doing the right thing. Although it may seem that an individual fulfills all these criteria on paper, sometimes we can observe their personal disadvantages, youth, impairment, or desperation. It seems that, even with the reassurance and recommendation from a mental health professional, ethical unease cannot be entirely erased because treatment guidelines have preceded the answers to vitally relevant questions…
While it was said that the court decision is “validating, confirming that after years of fighting to prove that gender-confirming care is medically necessary, they should have access to the same services that West Virginia Medicaid already provides to cisgender participants and that Transgender West Virginians should never feel as if their lives are worth less than others, What about validating the NIH viewpoint which says (in my opinion) that every life is valuable and deserves the consideration for how it was created?
Add to the fact that it’s questionable, to say the least, that this is a ”Necessary surgery”. It’s not necessary that tax dollars are paying for a decision that is not viewed as ethical by many of the people who have contributed those tax dollars.
This information was provided to keep you informed of how our struggling nation is putting our money to use. Ignoring matters that may not pertain to us, does not mean that those decisions will not effect you. When they’re determining their next medicare cuts, what will be cut so that decisions such as this can be made.?
https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/SDWV-320cv740.pdf
