How are you going to pay for surgery?
How many transgendered persons are there in this country? I don’t remember ever seeing any real research on that. I keep reading and being told that there aren’t very many of us at all. I keep reading and being told that Gender Identity Dysphoria is a rare and exotic condition.
What I do know is that in the years since my transition I have met, at most, several hundred transgendered people, and this only because I was on the Planning Committee of the Philadelphia Trans-Health Conference this year. (The attendance was approximately 1,200, but that included family, friends, health care workers and vendors.)
I would venture to guess there are, at most, one or two million of us in the general population. (And if anyone out there has more definite data on this, please speak up.) One to two million is a big number. Numbers, however, are relative. When you match that number up against the general population of the United States, it’s not that big at all.
Now, how many of us are post-operative? On this one I have heard a number. I have heard this number: 40,000. At any one time there are approximately 40,000 post-operative transsexuals in the general population.
That’s it? If there are one million of us out there it means that only 4% of us are post-operative at any one time.
My God, that’s genuinely troubling and depressing.
But it’s not surprising. It costs a lot of money to get to the Promised Land. Shall we add it all up? (Gulp! I never did this before.)
First and foremost there’s the cost of the surgery itself. In my case, that was $18,500. That breaks out as $10,000 for the hospital stay and $8,500 for the surgeon’s fee. (I’m not complaining. The care I received in the hospital was probably the best health care I have ever had. And as for the surgeon, her work approaches artistry.)
Then there are all the costs associated with traveling to and from the place of surgery:
Round-trip airline ticket: $826.50
Parking fee for my car at Philadelphia International Airport: $129.35
Hotel charge for three days before and three days after my hospital stay: $594.40
Rental car for 13 days: $301.88
Gas for the rental car: $29.65
Food and drink for the non-hospital part of the stay: $105.52Total of the above: $1,987.32
Grand Total: $20,487.32
And remember, that’s on top of everything else my transition cost. (Nearly two years of therapy, an hour a week at $110 an hour, the cost of Hormone Replacement Therapy and let’s not forget the cost of an entire new wardrobe.)
When you add all of that in, the total cost thus far is somewhere between $70,000 and $80,000.
No wonder so few of us manage to become post-op.
The only way the majority of us could ever do this is if medical insurance covered it and the majority of us could have affordable access to it.
But that, of course, is not the case. The health insurance providers use all the creativity they can muster to deny coverage to the Transgendered. And even when you have coverage, the costs of transition are excluded and treated as if these treatments and procedures are elective.
This isn’t elective. This is vital and fundamental to our mental and emotional well-being. This is about finally finding peace of mind. This is about finally feeling comfortable inside your own skin.
Being Transgendered is not a lifestyle choice. I did not wake up one morning and say to myself ‘œI’m bored with life. What can I do to spice things up? I know. I’ll change my gender!’
I didn’t ask for this. There is no choice for us. If there were, I think every last one of us would choose not to be Transgendered. The only choice we get is in what we chose to do or not do about it.
And, when we finally find the courage to stop denying the truth, confront it, and deal with it, society punishes us for it. They deny us access to the very treatments we need and use money as the weapon to do it.
Not too long ago the American Medical Association issued a position statement in which they (finally) admitted that Gender Identity Dysphoria is a medical condition and not a mental disorder. The statement also called for the health insurance providers to cover treatments for GID.
So why isn’t it happening? And what are we going to do about it?
Photo credit: stock.xchng.
I have a close family member MTF transgendered, she is about 8 years post op now. She had to cover all costs out of pocket, fortunately she could afford it. Another problem she has faced from the medical community, she moved to a very conservative part of the country and has had a hard time finding a doctor who will treat her!
I’m wondering if socialized medicine picks up the bill in Canada or Europe. I thought that the US was the place to go for this kind of surgery, no matter where you are from.
Ashley, when you put the numbers in print, it’s staggering. No wonder more trans folks don’t get surgery!
ashley, the prices you quote are similar here in Australia, but some of it is covered by health cover, and the hormones are at vastly reduced prices. however the boys, f2m, it is a different story again.
This article makes me think about a MTF friend I had back in Arkansas. She worked in a chicken plant…tough enough…but she would put in tons of overtime in order to earn the money she needed to fund her treatments/surgery. What strength that took!
You can get treatment on the NHS in the UK but local funding bodies (which pay for all healthcare) are free to choose their own priorities so some areas are more likely to fund treatment than others. In particular hormone treatment, psychiatric evaluation and some surgery is more likely to be covered than surgery deemed more cosmetic (like facial surgery).
In many ways the situation is similar to that faced by infertile couples in the UK who may or may not be able to get NHS treatment.
I also wondered whether socialized medicine covered any of this as well. Thank you Plonkee for telling us about the UK. I would guess there are other countries, as well, where some of these costs are covered. Krissy, you’re comment about it being different for f2m’s is interesting. Is it sexism? In America it’s the m2f’s like me who get most of that. There is a certain type of macho self-centered male who thinks the world and everything in it (women included)exists only to serve their needs. When they see someone like me, they think: “why would someone give up being a man to be a women? (Only they would condescendingly use “girl.”) A f2m friend of mine says that when these men see somebody like him they think: “Of course “she” wants to be a “he” because men rule.