Kevin Knauss: Health, History, Travel, Insurance
Posts on equality: Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex topics, including HIV/AIDS and gay marriage and health care, insurance benefits.
Anthem Blue Cross of California has included a section called Transgender Services in their Evidence of Coverage (EOC) documents for individual and family plans offered in California for 2015. While the seven paragraph section doesn’t provide a lot of details, it is a major step toward recognizing that individual plans must include such coverage to address the medically […]
An unexpected gift to my professional and personal life this past year of 2014 has been the numerous transgender men, women and families I became acquainted with as a health insurance agent. Through numerous conversations and correspondence I realized we had more in common with the transgender community than I previously thought. In reality, most of […]
The federal government is reaching out to behavioral health counselors and therapist to educate them on how the Affordable Care Act works so they can encourage members of the LGBT community to enroll in an ACA health plans. Sometimes the professionals who provide important health services through health plans offered through Healthcare.gov and CoveredCa.com can be the […]
Did the Supreme Court’s Hobby Lobby decision render the Female Genital Mutilation Act of 1995 null and void? While the Supreme Court specifically mentioned that their decision only applied narrowly to contraception mandated by the ACA, the bulk of the opinion and reasoning centered on the fact that the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA) […]
In a moment of exuberant passion for the cause of educating people about the stupidity of routine infant circumcision, I signed up the nascent Sacramento Intactivist group to march in the Sacramento Pride Parade. I walked in last year’s San Francisco Pride Parade with over 50 committed Intactivists and figured we could muster at least […]
Occasionally we all need a reminder that our lives are not the center of the universe and our neighbor’s journey may have had challenges that would make most us wilt. Rizi Timane’s ebook “An Unspoken Compromise” is a short but illuminating account of his journey from young Nigerian girl to adult man. As a transgender man, the unspoken compromise allows the author to maintain a silk thin connection with his fundamentalist Christian parents as he finally transitions in the United States.
Solid information is hard to come by when it relates to what health insurance plans will cover for gender reassignment surgery in California. In response to the Insurance Gender Non-Discrimination Act passed by California in 2013, some health plans have created detailed medical policies for transgender health benefits. For a variety of reasons the health insurance companies don’t make their policies readily available to the general public. I was able to locate two detailed outlines issued by Blue Shield of California relating to gender reassignment surgery.
While the Insurance Gender Nondiscrimination Act (IGNA), also known as AB 1586, prohibits health plans from denying medically necessary health care to transgender individuals, the exact treatment options covered for individuals with gender dysphoria remain unclear in California. The determination of whether a health plan will cover a certain medical procedure to facilitate the transition to the opposite and identified sex of the health plan member hinges on the medical necessity of the procedure.
Under the bright glow of the Granite Bay High School LED monument sign, local residents and students gathered to rally in support of the school play The Laramie Project. The famously anti-gay, hate filled, military funeral protesting Westboro Baptist Church had hinted that they might protest the LGBT themed play’s opening.
Covered California announced a marketing campaign aimed at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender communities to encourage them to enroll in new ACA health plans through the exchange. The print media and billboard advertising is in addition to grants to LGBT organizations to provide outreach and education.
