Y'all, congressional Republicans really fucking hate civil servants.
(Hey, if you have financial anxiety maybe skip this one. This post goes into a bit of the financial details of getting surgery and a bit of the stuff around it. If you’re waiting for a fundraising post, it will be coming shortly.)
The Affordable Care Act required that all health insurance plans to cover trans-affirming healthcare. Sort of.
The good news is that it means that my maximum cost for vaginoplasty—bottom surgery—is the annual out-of-pocket of my insurance plan—probably around $5,000. But almost everything else—facial hair removal ($4,000), facial feminization, breast augmentation—things that many trans femmes need to feel at home in our bodies—are not considered medically necessary. Neither is fertility preservation, so many (including me) have to pay to freeze (about $500) and store ($1200/year) sperm entirely out of our own pockets.
And it gets worse because surgery...