Marketplace aired a segment this morning explaining a Friday deadline to finalize rules protecting transgender patients.
Photo from 2013, courtesy marketplace.org.
Dan Gorenstein of WHYY in Philadelphia filed the report, which explains how anti-discrimination provisions in the Affordable Care Act can protect the estimated 1 million transgender Americans.
Transgender patients are still fighting to obtain critical health services despite the enactment of the ACA in March of 2010. The law required most provisions to go into effect by January 2014, but allowed for others to be phased in through 2020. While some services unique to transgender care may be obvious issues – gender reassignment therapy, for example. Yet, there remain other issues needing resolution that are downright absurd.
In the Marketplace segment Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, recounts one such example: “A trans-woman broke her arm playing softball … The insurance company refused to pay for it because if she hadn’t been transgender she wouldn’t have been playing softball. There’s just a million stories like that.”
Listen to the full segment here:
Last modified: April 17, 2018
