{"id":142,"date":"2015-12-07T03:36:25","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T11:36:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/?p=142"},"modified":"2015-12-09T07:42:36","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T15:42:36","slug":"should-and-how-medicare-pay-for-gender-reassignment-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/?p=142","title":{"rendered":"Medicare To Support Gender Reassignment Surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"

(Washington, DC) The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services <\/a>(CMS) is considering if medicare should pay for gender reassignment surgery and gender dysphoria treatments.<\/p>\n

To assist CMS with this decision, the agency is requesting public comments and input on a review of the available evidence and conduct a national coverage determination (NCD) review to determine whether health outcomes are improved from treatment for Gender Dysphoria and Gender Reassignment Surgery.<\/p>\n

\u201cI encourage our Native, LGBT Native and Two-Spirit leadership and<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>
Aiden Warrior (Cherokee) – Photo Credit Justin Hancock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

community to weigh in on this important discussion and to stand with all our Transitioning Two-Spirit people.\u201dsaid Aiden Warrior (Cherokee)<\/p>\n

The cost for gender reassignment surgery can be as high as $82,000 for a\u00a0female\u00a0transitioning to a male, and male-to-female reassignment can be $7,000 to $24,000 and is out of reach for many in Native community.<\/p>\n

Aiden continues, \u201cHaving medicare officially support gender reassignment surgery provides positive relief both physically and emotionally to our relatives dealing with \u2018gender dysphoria\u2019, said Aiden Warrior (Cherokee), \u201cthe impact on the Native American Two-Spirit community would be phenomenal. Many Natives can not afford these expensive surgeries. Indian Health Clinics would have to supply our Transitioning Two-Spirit people with the medical treatments that they deserve. I can only hope that this discussion continues to go towards a positive outcome as it would benefit the lives of so many individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prior to 2014, CMS did not cover gender dysphoria or gender reassignment surgery. This reversal happened when the Health and Human Services Administration\u2019s Appeals Board, concluded \u201c…that citing the alleged \u2018experimental\u2019 nature of transsexual surgery as a basis for noncoverage of all transsexual surgery is not reasonable in light of the unchallenged new evidence and contributes to our conclusion that the NCD is not valid.\u201d This action then opened up the possibility for Medicare’s regional contractors to pay for treatment.<\/p>\n

In pursuing a national coverage determination, the CMS wants public comment on whether the science backs improved health outcomes from gender dysphoria and gender reassignment surgery.<\/p>\n

Comments can be submitted\u00a0here<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0and are being accepted from now until January 2, 2016 with a proposed decision memorandum due on June 3, 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Washington, DC) The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is considering if medicare should pay for gender reassignment surgery and gender dysphoria treatments. To assist CMS with this decision, the agency is requesting public comments and input on a review of the available evidence and conduct a national coverage determination (NCD) review to determine …Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":153,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=142"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":172,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142\/revisions\/172"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twospiritjournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}