Judge Roger Gregory, writing for the majority, called the restrictions “obviously discriminatory” based on both sex and gender....
[The] states insisted that there was no bias in their coverage limitations, only cost concerns; trans patients, they argued, were entitled only to the same health treatments as everyone else but not specialized care....
The court [wrote that] cost-cutting could not justify covering the same treatments for health concerns other than gender dysphoria. For example, the court noted, the contested plans covered mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans women....
Mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans women? Don't they mean mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans men?! The Washington Post is having trouble keeping up, just like the people it looks down on.
ADDED: The article now has a correction: "An earlier version of this story reported that the contested insurance plans covered mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans women. The plans covered mastectomies for all cancer patients, but did not cover the procedure for trans men who wanted their breasts removed to treat gender dysphoria."
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71 comments:
doesn't THIS mean..
That the state WILL HAVE TO pay for:
Breast enhancement surgery for XX girls?
Penis enlargement surgery for XY boys?
If NOT.. WHY NOT?
Gender exploratory, not gender affirming.
Is Althouse in danger of raising a row..ling?
Of course, Trans-women can have Mastectomy... Moretectomies and Notectomies even, if that's what they want.
They don't call it "rogering" for no reason...
Why do I suspect that the State plans would have covered breast cancer treatment for both men and women (yes, men can get breast cancer, albeit rarely) and thus actually were non-discriminatory on the basis of sex and gender?
Wasn't this really what it was all about? The trans community has worked tirelessly to falsify huge amounts of data to game the system towards a future where all of us are on the hook financially for their delusion.
They absolutely want all of us to pay for their lifestyle choices, in much the same way as they want to force everyone to play along with their insistence on using their pronouns and changing the language to suit their agenda.
Utter BS.
Both men and women -- and by that I mean people with XY and XX chromosome sets -- can get breast cancer that requires surgery / mastectomy. Is this just a court saying "You have to call these XY people with breast cancer trans women?"
Trans Men (i.e., XX people) can get mastectomies, I would think, if they presented with breast cancer and that was the best course of action.
I haven't read the opinion (IANAL) but it seems like a case of Judges not really understanding what they're talking about, but writing towards a conclusion that they want to make.
I think the issue is - Mastectomies due to cancer are available to everybody (men get breast cancer too.) What is not covered are elective mastectomies not related to cancer. that is a fair delineation. I suppose if I need an arm amputation from an accident, it would be covered, but if I just hated my left arm, they would not cover it because it is cosmetic or elective. Why would transgender be different?
What did they do with the argument that it is simply not healthcare? What if I want a new nose or chin, should the state health-care plan pay for that? How about liposuction? A mani-pedi?
What's the rationale for saying yes to some of these and no to others?
Little known Fun fact: There’s a procedure honoring the great Roberto Duran called NoMastectomy.
Do the health plans cover mastectomies for females who identify as having breast cancer?
How far down this rabbit hole are we gonna go?
Elective, cosmetic surgery is not covered.
Mastectomies for a trans/neo-masculine gender identity. Carving front holes for a trans/neo-feminine gender identity. Binary genders with back... black holes... whores h/t NAACP.
Well, if a biological male does get breast cancer, I do hope they can get a mastectomy. However, I do wonder why they would need a hysterectomy.
Surgical, medical, and psycho-atric corruption for an "=" and inclusive transgender spectrum.
Equating someone's desire to remove their healthy breasts due to a mental disorder, to someone else's need to remove cancerous breasts to prevent spread of the cancer to other parts of the body thus causing their death, is ludicrous and indecent. Did these judges not learn how to distinguish one thing from another? It's not that hard to do, in a case like this! Shame on them.
Cosmetic surgery. Free boob jobs for the special people.
Transgender services were baked into Obamacare, so this was always headed to the Supreme Court. The quicker it gets there the better.
IMO the proponents of transgender care did not imagine that child mutilation would become a social infection, mania, or fad several years down the road. But Idiocracy happened.
"Huge boobs" become "Huge money makers" when cut off.
Vanderbilt University admitted to the profit factor. The predatory doctors got greedy, and ate the chickens before anyone knew foxes were in the hen house. Now wait for a long and slow ideological change.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/willskipworth/2023/08/11/vanderbilt-hospital-under-civil-rights-investigation-over-releasing-transgender-patient-records-to-tennessee-ag/?sh=46ba40d720b1
https://apnews.com/article/health-social-media-tennessee-nashville-730906b47882692645463fe9546a8695
This is ridiculous. The surgeries associated with trans-individuals are cosmetic in nature. No insurance company should be obligated to cover cosmetic surgeries.
Boob jobs are elective surgery. If a woman wants breast implants to enhance her bosom, which is arguably gender affirming...insurance doesn't pay for that.
For example, the court noted, the contested plans covered mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans women....
WTF does this mean. Men who want boob jobs to become women can get them but women who want boob jobs can't? Or does in mean women with penises are being denied mastectomies even though they don't have boobs or breast cancer? Does Elliot Page now qualify for prostate cancer treatment...even though he/she doesn't have a prostate?
The stupidity and corruption of today's courts and judges is just one of the many indicators of America's sad decline and inevitable downfall.
Don't they mean mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans men?
Really? Insurance companies are denying breast cancer treatment for bull dykes? You walk in with a butch haircut and no cancer treatment for you??
That's not true. It's bullshit.
The state-established religion endorses/forces public payments for abortion of viable human life, mutilation of boys and girls, shared responsibility for adult choices, etc. in the far-left traditional fashion.
They cover mastectomies for women who could die from breast cancer…but do they cover boob jobs for perfectly healthy women?
Seems like a closer analogy. And yes there are women with mental health issues that struggle with self-esteem and breast size.
And when I say women I mean original women.
There's no need to cover elective surgery. In fact it's probably uninsurable.
Isn't genital mutilation an elective surgery? Why should insurance cover that?
Does this include breast implants for men? Can women get implants? A stripper might plead that they are professionally required.
Silly, silly, silly
John Henry
This is good news for Howard- he can finally get himself fixed at the vet free of charge.
I have a hard time believing that any health insurance plan denies coverage for any cancer treatment for anyone. Straight white cis-het men get breast cancer also (rare, but not uncommon)
"but it seems like a case of Judges not really understanding what they're talking about"
At least one (high ranking, no less) is on record as being unable to define what a woman is. So there's that.
Bodily mutilation and mental corruption are "health care" and profitable in the mode of elective abortion. Choices have progressive, liberal consequences.
Pay wall. Is this just for Medicaid or all insurance plans?
I'd like to see this go the Supremes. As others have noted, this is really elective surgery.
The Law is an Ass.
I need to read the opinion. As noted above - men can get mastectomies if they have cancer. Therefore there is no gender discrimination. It seems that the policies discriminate based on whether one has cancer. If you have cancer and surgery is called for to treat the disease, then you can have surgery. If you think you are a member of the opposite sex - a condition of the mind (at best a mental disease) - you cannot have surgery (perhaps you could have a lobotomy?).
Under this rationale, I guess a member of the white race can have a surgical procedure to render a person black?
I really need to read the opinion - this makes no sense at all. I cannot figure out what the equal protection claim/violation is.
Trigger warning 😦⚠️
Wa St Blogger @1:13 calls it. There are people who express a firm desire to be amputees. And there's no rational difference between wanting to remove healthy breasts vs. healthy arms or legs.
The breast augmentation example is also apt. Some women experience mental distress at having an itty bitty titty committee. Why should making them bigger be verboten but making them disappear be OK? There are also, fwiw, women who undergo breast reduction surgery -- not a double mastectomy, just something to make unwieldy knockers a little more manageable. Is that also covered?
The question "Is it medicine?" has been around a long time. I remember George Will, way back in the 70s or so, instancing the case of a woman who wanted one perfectly healthy breast removed because it interfered with her golf swing.
Or maybe teh Law is a Back Hole?
En banc decision 8-6 - opinion here: https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/221927.P.pdf Not a strong opinion - Judge Gregory's opinions are usually better than this. Up front, Gregory lays his cards on the table "West Virginia’s Medicaid Program (“the Program”) covers some gender-affirming care, but not gender-affirming surgery, or, as the Program calls it, “[t]ranssexual surgery.” " At page 8 (which is the first page of the actual opinion - the prior pages are mostly a list of the amici).
You know something is Orwellian when it relies on a euphemism rather than the descriptive. See "Politics and the English Language" (1946) (Ask yourself - wouldn't gender affirming care retain the breasts of a woman or the penis of a man? Wouldn't it actually affirm the biology?)
I think we'll see this on the SCt docket next year.
Lem the artificially intelligent said...
Little known Fun fact: There’s a procedure honoring the great Roberto Duran called NoMastectomy.
******************
There's also a 100% effective birth control med called NO Acetal.
baddabish
Men do suffer breast cancer, they do have mastectomies. The surgery is to remove cancer. If their is no cancer, it is an elective surgery. Two women I know have had breast reduction surgery. Its an elective
In times past the Fourth Circuit was regarded as conservative. Elections (and judicial appointments) have consequences.
Yancey Ward: "This is good news for Howard- he can finally get himself fixed at the vet free of charge."
With the FJB regime changes to Title IX, without any physical changes at all, Howitzer Howard can self-identify as a 12 year old girl and finally, at long last, be competitive in a sports league.
Our elites are idiots.
Can I also get free plastic surgery? My mental image of my body is that I'm still young. Perhaps some lifting and tightening could be done at the government's expense. Thank you in advance to everyone who pays taxes. I appreciate you.
It seems to me that a lot of the driver for trans surgery in the US is driven by money. If it's covered by Obamacare, just watch the numbers explode - until the hospitals are sued into bankruptcy
Wince said...
"Elective, cosmetic surgery is not covered."
True on its face, but they're presuming that gender dysphoria as an underlying medical condition necessitates 'reassignment treatment,' and say that insurers must cover it on that basis.
The cost that will add extra strain on insurance resources, public and private, is part of the Cloward-Piven strategy. Maybe they're counting on MAID as part of the strategy to offset costs and relieve part of the burden.
I'm not surprised to see this, and actually kind of glad, because it means this bullsh*t is going to come to a head sooner rather than later. "U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit rejected that argument, saying the plans were discriminating against trans people in need of treatment.... "Need for treatment" - boy they said a mouthful, there. The insurance company lawyers are going to have a field day waving around the Cass Report, and I would imagine that a similar effort is probably underway here in the US as well.
Funny, how nothing was said in the story about the judges.
Finally. Chuck can become a real boy.
But not dentristy. Those fuckers. And has anyone besides me ever seen the inside of a dialysis clinic?
Dante would die puking and raging. Or he would get a very good rifle.
For example, the court noted, the contested plans covered mastectomies for cancer patients but not for trans women....
Are these hypothetical trans women "[breast] cancer patients"? Then the plans cover them. Are they trans women who have no medical condition requiring mastectomies? Then the plans don't cover them.
"Cancer patients" are anyone with cancer undergoing medical care. "Trans women" are delusional people perhaps needing psychiatric therapy. One thing is not like the other. If the plans cover psychiatric therapy for the latter case, well - maybe ok, but not for surgery.
If this case goes to the Supreme Court, then Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson should recuse herself from the case since human biology is self-admittedly outside her ken. Not only are confusing concepts like 'women' involved, there are all kinds of other biological entities to consider: trans men, trans women...
I know a guy who served in three wars before he was 30-- including swooping in and rescuing what was left after Black Hawk Down, 24 hours after the UN ordered him out because he was special forces, who was abandoned in an Italian hospital by mistake, left with substandard care, and duct-taped himself to a wheelchair and talked himself onto an airplane with no passport, where on the other end, the head doctor for the Pittsburgh football team saved his leg. A black woman. All the cops and firefighters convinced her. She fucking rocked, and he fucking walks on two legs.
That's a yount.
That's what we should be spending our money on. Not this crap.
Iowan: there is no similarity between middle-aged women who have breast reductions because it solves spine, hip, and knee problems, and the insane freaks who cut off their tits at 20 because of literary theory.
The former do it to avoid hip and back surgeries. I know three of them, and it made them much, much more healthy: they lost pain and more weight, and are able to exercise.
Sometimes a giant tit is just a pain in the ass.
bat shit crazy. gender dysphoria is a mental illness and can't be corrected by surgery or drugs, but once transitioned certainly leads to a higher likelihood of suicide.
There are women doing prophylactic mastectomies directed by DNA analysis. Unknown if that is a sufficient indicator for insurance coverage.
They abort other "burdens" under the umbrella of "health care". We're all good Americans NOW: diversity, human rites, Mengele mania, and ethnic Springs, too.
That's one heck of a correction!
Catholic medical ethics says mutilation is wrong. Removing a diseased organ no problem. Removing an excessively large breast causing back problems is okay. Breast augmentation? Iffy. Plastic surgery is decided on a case to case basis. Removing a breast electively because one desires it to be removed is not allowed, because there are alternatives (breast binding for example). Even the Pope cautioned against the transgender fad that the west if promoting.
So this will be the next way for those in charge to sue Catholic hospitals and personnel.
"bat shit crazy. gender dysphoria is a mental illness and can't be corrected by surgery or drugs, but once transitioned certainly leads to a higher likelihood of suicide."
That's pretty grim but in the meantime, it means lots of money for the medical folks involved.
I was meant to be a ballplayer.
I've known this since the day I was born.
I can only achieve this by attending a D1 college.
They're expensive, so give me tax money.
As someone who has had two different breast cancers that required two separate mastectomies 15 years apart -- I am insulted and angry. To equate the fact that mastectomies to save your life are covered - so breast removal (for no medical reason) should also be covered --- is ridiculous. Mastectomies are covered by insurance because without them you will likely die! And I think most insurance will cover mastectomies for women and men that have a high risk of breast cancer because of genetics (BRCA genes).
As many have pointed out - men can get breast cancer and might need a mastectomy to remove the breast tissue. All MEN and WOMEN that have breast cancer are already covered.
Heck, maybe I will change my thinking - maybe all mastectomies should be covered for anyone who wants them - as long as they also get the whole treatment, which includes radiation, chemo and estrogen blocker! That will clearly put a halt to this nonsense.
Hopefully this will come to a head sooner rather than later.
Far too many judges are scientifically illiterate.
The only upside is that those seeking such elective surgeries will stop clogging the VA medical system.
With the progress of political congruence, health care is equivocal and inclusive. Life is congruent to death, couples are congruent to couplets, sex is congruent to gender, citizen is congruent to alien... Spring Forward! All's fair in lust and abortion.
Sorry, fake-gender surgery is elective surgery, not covered. The 4th Circuit is delusional.
Mike of Snoqualmie: "Sorry, fake-gender surgery is elective surgery, not covered."
Howitzer Howard Hardest Hit.
Whiskeybum said...
If this case goes to the Supreme Court, then Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson should recuse herself from the case since human biology is self-admittedly outside her ken. Not only are confusing concepts like 'women' involved, there are all kinds of other biological entities to consider: trans men, trans women...
*************
You can bet that some whacko trans interest group would file an "amicus curiae" brief arguing for fifty pages that "woman" has NEVER been defined or regarded to mean an "adult human being with XX chromosomes".
Jumangi Brown would therefore argue that the statute is "void for vaugueness."
You can count on it.
Iowan2
Removal of reproductive organs is covered for women with a very specific genetic marker for breast cancer, mostly Ashkenazi (Western and Central) descended Jews, who are almost likely to develop breast and/or ovarian cancer. My best friend from high school lost her mother and little sister in the same month from breast cancer: they were Ashkenazi Jews. The daughter was 30. My friend had the procedure. It's medical, not ideological. And it is covered. Angelina Joli did the same. Her mom died very young of breast cancer. There is some prevalence among other central European descended women, but marrying in-culture made the gene especially prevalent in Jewish communities.
Iowan: nobody needs a hip or knee replacement either, but they are covered. Nobody needs Viagara, but it is covered. Reducing large breasts saves money in the long run when they reduce the need for back, knee, neck, and hip surgeries.
Which they do. Why do old men need erections?
"Which they do. Why do old men need erections?"
It restores proper function to a part of the body. Not sure why that is bad, but YMMV.
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