Medicare Ordered to Consider Covering Sex-Change Surgery

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-30/medicare-ordered-to-consider-covering-sex-change-surgery.html

The U.S. Medicare program should cover the cost of sex reassignment surgery in some cases, an appeals board ruled today, overturning a long-held agency policy.

The ruling by the Departmental Appeals Board doesn’t require coverage of all sex reassignment surgeries. Instead, the program can determine whether the procedure is medically appropriate on a case-by-case basis.

Still, policies by Medicare, the $512 billion U.S. health plan for the elderly and disabled, are often followed by private insurers, potentially making the surgery more accessible to younger transgender Americans. The policy barring payments for the surgeries was based on “information compiled in 1981” that’s now obsolete, the appeals board said.

“Transgender and gender-variant people continue to face many barriers in seeking health services,” Amy Nelson, a supervising attorney at Whitman-Walker Health, a clinic in Washington, said in a statement. “Insurance coverage decisions should be consistent with science, and for far too long, that has not been the case.”