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The Brown Student Health Insurance Plan will cover 14 different sexual reassignment surgery procedures starting in August, Director of Insurance and Purchasing Services Jeanne Hebert confirmed in an email to The Herald.</p>
<p>The move makes Brown one of a handful of schools and healthcare providers nationwide to cover the surgeries.
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<p>I'm against this at any age, but it is especially troubling when subsidized by universities and carried out on young people. This is not "health insurance".</p>
<p>From a practical standpoint, how could a student take time away from class, exams, papers, etc, to have non-essential surgery plus the recuperation time.</p>
<p>Since it will be covered by insurance, I’m sure everyone will want sex reassignment surgery, now. Right?</p>
<p>Kidding aside, even if I put on the most liberal hat I can, I find this troubling on several grounds. First, I have to believe that it will raise the cost of the Brown insurance to a meaningful extent, and that cost will be borne only (especially) by those students who don’t have other insurance options. Second, by having one of the few insurance programs that will cover these procedures, Brown is effectively putting great pressure on its students to hurry up and have sex reassignment surgery now, before they graduate, when in the normal course of things most people have to wait and save for years as adults before they can afford this type of surgery. That long, difficult, expensive process at least means that people who get sex reassignment surgery have thought very long and very hard about it, and about whether there aren’t better, cheaper alternatives.</p>
<p>The good news is that I haven’t heard of many people who already knew that they wanted this kind of surgery when they were in college.</p>
<p>Is this the same insurance that covers grad students, too?</p>
<p>^^You aren’t comfortable leaving it between patient and the medical profession to decide if reassignment surgery is appropriate? If it is appropriate - I can’t see a reason to delay. I guess I think insurance should be available in such a case.</p>
<p>No, I’m not comfortable leaving the decision whether to have what amounts to really complex, expensive cosmetic surgery to the surgeon who would perform it and an adolescent patient, while socializing the cost. Especially when you are talking about something where there isn’t anything like a social consensus that, outside of really narrow circumstances, this is ever appropriate.</p>
<p>I even wonder whether there isn’t an agenda here from Brown also owning a medical school and a hospital system. What a way to boost the volume of procedures you do! Before you know it, they’ll be a world leader in sex reassignment surgery.</p>
<p>I sort of thought more medical professionals than just surgeons were involved. Isn’t there an extensive counseling component? I don’t know that for a fact. Just my impression. The few people I have known who have had this surgery waited years before it could happen. I didn’t have the impression it had anything to do with financial resources.</p>
<p>Adolescents should not be making this decision when they are in college. The prefrontal cortex matures during this time and this is a MAJOR decision. Totally agree with JHS.</p>
<p>Not your call. It’s between the patient and the doctor(s). And fwiw, if you talk to just about an Transperson, they will tell you that they’ve felt this way since early childhood. But that’s a whole other discussion.</p>
<p>If this is what Brown chooses to cover, then so be it. I can think of far less necessary things that most insurance plans cover… but no one seems to be up in arms about them. </p>
<p>Just another reason though why we need a completely different insurance system than we currently have.</p>
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<p>Yes. It is a very long process with extensive counseling and other processes- long before the actual surgery.</p>
<p>A reasonable compromise would have been to make it an additional rider, and offer the possibility to the students who are forced to buy the Brown insurance to opt out and NOT be responsible for that type of cosmetic surgery. And force Brown, and the people who pushed for the changes to cover the deficit and shortfalls. </p>
<p>In a time of needed belt-tightening for higher education and the great difficulties of families to catch up with the constant cost increases, this decision seems utterly irresponsible.</p>
<p>We allow the decision of abortion to be between a young adult and her doctor, as it should be. I also think this is another decision that should be between the young adult and his or her doctor.<br>
I think it goes without saying that this will continue to be a rare procedure, so the cost may not contribute to raising the overall insurance costs very much at all.
I think what seems to bother some people is that it appears to be an elective procedure. I think that if you were a young person wanting this procedure, you would not consider it “elective,” but necessary for one’s mental health.</p>
<p>I am kind of stunned by this. Is this political correctness gone mad or do standard insurance policies cover such things? I m honestly at a loss as to what to make of this except to say that I never considered this a medical or health issue.</p>
<p>“No, I’m not comfortable leaving the decision whether to have what amounts to really complex, expensive cosmetic surgery to the surgeon who would perform it and an adolescent patient, while socializing the cost.”</p>
<p>I totally agree. I can’t imagine any physician would be willing to do this upon someone who isn’t even old enough to legally drink a glass of wine. The person you are at 18-19-20, is absolutely not the same person you will be 5-10 years later, no matter how mature you are. I thought there were years of intense, serious counseling. How do you get to do that with such a young adult? I personally do not just trust that every single physician is ethical and will always do the right thing. People have agendas. Jeez, a doctor even impregnated Octo-mom!</p>
<p>There is no way that this should be compared to abortion. If a woman decides she needs to get an abortion, it is an inexpensive, minor procedure that has a serious time restraint on it. A sex reassignment is major, affecting every single aspect of your life and costs a lot of money. And one that is worth waiting until one is dead certain that there is no better option.</p>
<p>I wanted to get my tubes tied in my young twenties. I’m sure my children are very happy that there wasn’t someone there ready to pay for it, encourage and push me into it.</p>
<p>I think that it is awfully young to be making such an irrevocable decision. I have no doubt that there ARE people who really are ready at that age, but I would hate to think that anyone would feel pressured to move ahead because of the difficulty of obtaining coverage later. (And I do know at least one very unhappy and bitter person who cannot afford the surgery later in life.)</p>
<p>Romani- when You are my age…get back to me … yes it is between a doctor and patient…BUT, we are talking about irreversible changes. Caution and time are the best choices.</p>
<p>Brown is not the first university to offer this. According to the article, Stanford, Penn, and Harvard already offer this coverage. Getting the surgery requires years of counseling and other things such as living as the desired gender for a year. I doubt many students will take advantage of the coverage. I also wonder how complete the coverage is. What percentage of the costs are covered?</p>
<p>Seems if it requires “many” years of counseling as a pre-requisite, and then another year living as the desired gender, then the student would graduate by the time the surgery could even begin.</p>