Posted on 05/30/2014 11:31:31 AM PDT by reaganaut1
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Transgender people receiving Medicare may no longer be automatically denied coverage for sex reassignment surgeries, a U.S. Department of Health and Services review board ruled Friday in a groundbreaking decision that recognizes the procedures as a medically necessary and effective treatment for individuals who do not identify with their biological sex.
Ruling in favor of a 74-year-old Army veteran whose request to have Medicare pay for her genital reconstruction was denied two years ago, the agency's Departmental Appeals Board ruled that a three-decade-old HHS rule excluding such surgeries from the procedures covered by the national health program for the elderly and disabled was unjustified.
"Sometimes I am asked aren't I too old to have surgery. My answer is how old is too old?" the veteran, Denee Mallon, of Albuquerque, New Mexico, said in an email interview before the board issued its decision. "When people ask if I am too old, it feels like they are implying that it's a 'waste of money' to operate at my age. But I could have an active life ahead of me for another 20 years. And I want to spend those years in congruence and not distress."
Jennifer Levi, a lawyer who directs the Transgender Rights Project of Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston, said the ruling does not mean Medicare recipients are necessarily entitled to have sex reassignment surgery paid for by the government.
Instead, the lifting of the coverage ban means they now will be able to seek authorization by submitting documentation from a doctor and mental health professionals stating that surgery is medically indicated in their individual case, Levi said.
Transgender health advocates said that because private insurance companies and state-run Medicaid programs that provide health insurance for low-income individuals often take their cue
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
America went insane in 2008.
since you asked.
but it is amazing, a great wonder really, just how much worse they manage to make things...almost every day....
didn’t Dante’s Hell only have 7 levels of getting worse and worser ?
I’m confused, wasn’t it o’blowhard that said of the elderly that it might just be better to give them a pain pill ?
“Does this mean that John Boehner can finally get some testicle implants?”
Gold star for that snark.
When the Kenyan said he was going to “fundamentally transform” America, I didn’t think he meant that he was going to transform it into a nation of raging lunatics.
‘America has descended into total madness.’
I agree. I can only imagine if Rip Van Winkle fell asleep in 1984 only to awaken today.
Some days I look around and am absolutely flabbergasted by the insanity!
Can’t recall about Dante, but what’s the old saying... “Whom the Gods Destroy, they first make mad.”
That seems to be America at this point.
They pay for it because the freaks at the APA have decided that homosexuality and transsexuality are not mental disorders. Which they are! If transsexuality is a medical condition than an insurance must pay for it.
The image of these old coots getting genital reconstruction is laughable and nauseating at the same time. The American Dream: You can get anything you want at any time you want. Sick beyond measuring.
Not anything. Indeed, my mother, who has cancer, was just informed today that Medicare is cutting her home-health care service.
Yep, that gets axed. But, Medicare is fine with opening up its coffers to wackos wanting to be surgically transformed into an army of RuPaul’s.
America has become a sick, sick place.
Yes indeed,
For cunningly of old
was the celebrated saying revealed:
evil sometimes seems good
to a man whose mind
a god leads to destruction. ...(Sophocles, Antigone 620-3)
(and Dante’s Hell has at least 9 levels. The lawyers are sent to Level 3, where they are confined to a hot burning metal box to suffocate forever , or something like that... what goes around, comes around..)
So now somebody who wants to change at any age can get themselves declared disabled, get SSI, wait two years for Medicare and get mutilated.
Most of 'em need horn removal and trunk extensions....to be proper elephants, of course.
An addadicktome trumps being able to walk I guess.
Yup. We’ve lost it. Not as a God-fearing people, but the ones in charge have lost it for us. Prayers for your mother to get the care she needs somehow.
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