Not just bathrooms: Feds issue regulation Friday to force health insurance to cover sex change operations - Thomas Lifson

by Thomas Lifson

While seniors in need of hip replacements may be told to take painkillers and live out their last years sedated and immobile, because total funds are limited, younger people who want to try life as the other sex “must be treated consistent with their gender identity…”

While the federal decree abolishing sex segregation in bathrooms (and incidentally establishing the principle that your sex is whatever you say it is – with far reaching consequences for Title IX and many other federal programs based on sex), the Department of Health and Human Services (DHS) issued a regulation that will make health insurance, including Obamacare and Medicaid, more expensive.  Now, your premiums will cover genital mutilation and hormone therapy for anyone that decides to play the role of the opposite sex. 

Elizabeth Harrington explains on the Free Beacon:

The agency released its final “Nondiscrimination in Health Programs and Activities” rule, which enforces Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
The regulation “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex, age, or disability; enhances language assistance for individuals with limited English proficiency; and protects individuals with disabilities,” the agency said in a release.
Doctors and health insurers also cannot deny “health care or health coverage based on an individual’s sex, including discrimination based on pregnancy, gender identity, and sex stereotyping.”
In a fact sheet on the portion of the rule regarding sex discrimination, the government explains that health care providers cannot refuse to cover all services related to a sex change—such as hormone therapy, breast implants, and the surgery itself—as a matter of policy.
“Categorical coverage exclusions or limitations for all health care services related to gender transition are discriminatory,” the agency said.
The rule also includes a bathroom provision, stating that “individuals must be treated consistent with their gender identity, including in access to facilities.”
Additionally, health care providers “may not deny or limit treatment for any health services that are ordinarily or exclusively available to individuals of one gender based on the fact that a person seeking such services identifies as belonging to another gender.”
The regulation will apply to virtually all hospitals, health care providers, and insurance companies.
“The Section 1557 final rule applies to any health program or activity, any part of which receives funding from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), such as hospitals that accept Medicare or doctors who receive Medicaid payments; the Health Insurance Marketplaces and issuers that participate in those Marketplaces; and any health program that HHS itself administers,” the agency said.

Let this sink in for moment. While seniors in need of hip replacements may be told to take painkillers and live out their last years sedated and immobile, because total funds are limited, younger people who want to try life as the other sex “must be treated consistent with their gender identity…” (emphasis added).

Why these moves occurred in tandem is anyone’s guess. Especially in light of the coming presidential election. Hillary Clinton has not yet been asked her position on the new doctrine that sex is optional and daily choices of people who describe themselves as “gender fluid” must be accommodate by schoolchildren and health care insurers.

I suppose that when people change their minds about the “sex change” surgeries they receive and want to return to the gender consistent with their chromosomes, everyone else will have to pay via their insurance payments for the surgeries and therapies that reverse the surgeries already paid for.

Thomas Lifson

Source: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/05/not_just_bathrooms_feds_issue_regulation_friday_to_force_health_insurance_to_cover_sex_change_operations.html

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