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One of the best quotes I've been able to find is from SuperMed One / Medical Mutual of Ohio. The question, friends, is, are they known to be kind towards us? Antagonistic towards us? Or don't really care as long as we pay our premiums on time and handle our copays and coinsurances?
I'm in a unique position to actually choose my insurance since my employer does not provide me with any. I've just been informed by my boss that I have been made a regular employee, no longer just a temporary full time, so I now know I have a steady income for a long time to come - so it's time to get things rolling and get some health insurance to help me do so.
If anyone lives in Ohio and can suggest other insurers to look into as well, especially if this one isn't friendly, please do.
Thanks,
Abigail Drew.
There are a number of
There are a number of companies that cover SRS. AETNA is one, I believe, but it does require the Canadian standards of care (two years of RLT) and other requirements of the Standards of Care which have just been liberalized, IIRC. I would suggest you check those out. I believe the Transgender Law Center may have that information, or the HRC may still have it listed. You can also search SRS Insurance Coverage. Sadly, I didn't have it through my work. Since you will be buying your own, then you should be able to select what you want to include SRS coverage. It is not supposed to add more than a few dollars to the premium.
CaroL
CaroL
What's two more years?
It'll probably take longer than that for everyone I hope to keep around to get used to the idea. For some reason, AETNA wasn't showing up on my broader searches, but when I looked them up directly... wow.
Can't beat $5k annual deductible, $82 monthly premium (for my age and currently legal sex), no copay or coinsurance once deductible's been met, and, best of all, the only thing I expect to need for transition that they won't cover would be vocal surgeries, which they class as cosmetic. I suppose I could find a way to wiggle that in, but I'll just pay for it out of pocket, I guess.
Now, the question is, why are the female premiums higher? That's like a $20 increase... I do want to know, since it's recognized fact that men tend to have more health problems than women, why women pay higher premiums?
Well, anyways. Thanks for the tip CaroL, AETNA's high deductible plan seems to be exactly what I need. Add dental coverage and it's still under $100 a month, and once the deductible is met...
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Vocal surgeries, and female premiums
Vocal surgeries aren't terribly effective anyway. They can only raise the base pitch of your voice, not change the resonance, which is most of what distinguishes a male from a female voice; it doesn't raise the top end of your range; and there's only half an octave difference between the average male voice and the average female voice anyway, so unless you sing basso profundo it probably won't help. The recordings of before and after voices I found on the Internet a few years ago were monumentally unimpressive--the "after" voice sounded like a bad falsetto.
Far more effective, and less expensive, is working with a voice coach who specializes in transgender voice training. That's the route I went, and it requires a lot of work and dedication but the results are well worth it. For me at least, with my old voice, I couldn't hope to "pass" on the phone even when I had little trouble passing face-to-face, but after a year of weekly sessions I was passing on the phone more often than not, and now with another year of experience and real-world application of what I learned, I pass on the phone even when I have a bad cold that makes my voice low and gravelly enough to do a spot-on impression of Johnny Cash. Because it really isn't the pitch that matters--it's the resonance (women's voices resonate more in the face, men's in the chest), and the variations in pitch (women tend to vary the pitch more and the volume less than men), and the choice of words and phrases (men and women really do speak two somewhat different dialects).
Pregnancy and childbirth are horrendously expensive.
interesting...
And I've found some very impressive before and after's for people who used the surgeries AND the training. Which is kind of what I was hoping to do. It's not terribly large like some guys, but I definitely have too prominent an adam's apple to leave alone, at the very least, so I figured why not have the whole thing done if I'm going to have that bit done?
The thing is, they specifically only cover complications from pregnancy and childbirth. Are complications really getting that common that it merits a $20 hike in premiums for women, instead of a few dollars for all? People used to, and many still do, give birth au naturale without that horrid a stillbirth or death shortly after birth or mother death in childbirth rate... Honestly, I'd think they'd have a greater number of MtF's and FtM's taking advantage of their trans coverage than women needing coverage for complications of childbirth.
But then, what do I know... a sad tale about the typical American lifestyle and quality of health if pregnancy complications are that common...
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
Good question
Oh yes, complications happen all the time, and always have in every society throughout history, whether done au naturale or in a modern hospital. Most pregnancies and childbirths would work out fine without modern medical intervention, and for most minor to moderate complications I'd trust an experienced midwife over an OB-GYN to handle it properly. But for one of the bad ones, well--it's modern medicine's improved handling of those dire situations that is largely responsible for women's life expectancy leapfrogging past men's (from far behind) in most of the world in the past century or so. I think the best answer is what we ended up doing for our third child--having a midwife with us in the birthing room at the hospital birthing center, acting as mother's advocate and providing added emotional support.
Also, now that I think of it, if the policy covers birth control, that could account for at least part of the premium difference as well.
Oh, and were I a "natural" female...
I'd lean towards keeping it natural anyways. Maybe see a specialist to keep track of my hormone levels and the hormone levels in my womb if that's possible, and just try to watch my diet and everything to make sure I'm not feeding my child any kind of early fetal hormonal imbalances to cause something like what I've gone through. Could probably even get the specialist to bill them as preventive care, getting them covered 100% without even needing to go through deductible.
Get a midwife hired to stick close by when I'm getting close to term, and just go it the old school way.
I have an extremely high pain tolerance and I'm kinda crazy though ;)
Abigail Drew.
Abigail Drew.
*Sigh*
If only...
SRS coverage
I dont know anything about those particular plans, sorry. But in my experience, most plans would cover SRS if they didn't have explicit exclusions in the fine print, which until recently, virtually all policies offered in the US had had since the 1970s. And the only way to find out if a policy has these exclusions is to read the fine print on the actual policy; it's never mentioned in the plan summaries.
Unless a company has chosen to remove that exclusion from all their policies, I seriously doubt they would offer that as an option on an individual plan since they'd be pretty much guaranteed to lose money on every policy sold with that option. It only makes sense if they include it in all their policies and then up everyone's premiums by a buck or two. Then, statistically they can still make lots of money on it, since we're such a small percentage of the population and only need it once each in our lifetimes.
Best of luck in your search. I believe there are companies that have chosen to drop this exclusion; Aetna may well be one of them, and I think I may have read somewhere that Cigna had, too. More are joining all the time, as the HRC has added transgender health coverage to their criteria for rating a company 100%, which means the insurers for the Fortune 500 will be pressured to get on that bandwagon.