Medicaid must cover gender transition surgeries

A federal judge in West Virginia ruled in favor of Lambda Legal, a group representing LGBT interests. West Virginia’s Medicaid program must now cover gender transition surgeries. The judge argued that the applicable Medicaid exclusion would violate the 14th Amendment, the Affordable Care Act, and the Medicaid Act.

From the Washington Examiner:

The judge also outright dismissed the claim that gender transition surgeries are not medically necessary, saying the argument is “wholly unsupported by the record, and importantly, is refuted by the majority of the medical community.”

An initial lawsuit challenging the state Department of Health and Human Resources’s blanket Medicaid exclusion was filed on behalf of Christopher Fain, who was denied coverage for a testosterone prescription under Medicaid, and Zachary Martell, who is married to a state employee with healthcare coverage.

Fain and Martell were rejected from being covered for a bilateral mastectomy, which led Fain to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of 600 transgender residents who faced rejections for Medicaid coverage.

Shauntae Anderson, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, called Chambers’s decision “lifesaving” in a statement .

“I am excited to finally have access to the healthcare I deserve. The exclusion negatively affects my health and wellbeing as well as the health and wellbeing of other transgender Medicaid participants in our community,” Anderson said.

Lambda Legal attorney Avatara Smith-Carrington issued a statement after the ruling saying that transgender Medicaid participants in the state deserve to have equal access to healthcare that “cisgender Medicaid participants receive as a matter of course.”

“Protecting and advancing health care for transgender people is vital, sound, and just,” Smith-Carrington said.

The Washington Examiner contacted the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.

Chambers’s ruling comes as more Republican-led states seek to impose bans on gender transition treatments for minors, despite the Justice Department’s recent attempts to counter such bans by invoking the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

The Washington Examiner has the balance of the article at this link.

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