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<p>And everything someone armed with a keyboard and a trackpad writes in a story must be … true. </p>
<p>[State</a> Farm® - State of Disbelief (French Model) - YouTube](<a href=“http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I]State”>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmx4twCK3_I)</p>
<p>Maybe xiggi has some info that Brown is the only college providing this coverage. Here’s a website that provides info on colleges that provide coverage for surgery and hormone therapy for students and faculty. Of course, it could all be a lie (yes, I’ve seen the “French model” commercial. </p>
<p>[Transgender-Inclusive</a> Benefits: Colleges & Universities | Resources | Human Rights Campaign](<a href=“http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/transgender-inclusive-benefits-colleges-universities]Transgender-Inclusive”>http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/transgender-inclusive-benefits-colleges-universities)</p>
<p>Any student who takes the time away from their course work to have major elective surgery isn’t going to last long enough in college to complete the entire series of surgeries necessary for all the reconstruction. </p>
<p>They’d be so far behind everyone else, missing exams, missing assignments, that they’d flunk out. </p>
<p>When students have major, necessary surgery they are permitted to have a medical time off for a semester or quarter. But surgery that is optional and cosmetic? No.</p>
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<p>Yes. Also, many students are forced to get college insurance plans instead of whatever insurance plan they had because the college supposedly wants really comprehensive coverage. Shouldn’t the insurance plan then offer comprehensive coverage?</p>
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<p>I’d assume this surgery could be scheduled during a break. Again, this is the student’s health insurance, not always by their choice, and it’s not the job of the health insurance to monitor how medical care affects academics.</p>
<p>I don’t think this kind of surgery is generally administered lightly or allowed to be administered lightly. And it’s a very different situation than getting tubes tied.</p>
<p>One would think the universities, particularly those already costing a fortune like Brown, would be looking into ways to save students money. Not adding expensive cosmetic procedures that run up the costs of the student health plan.</p>
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<p>The French model might have told you “Vous venez de rater une occasion de vous taire!”</p>
<p>Obviously, you are entitled to assume that others are unable to follow links in stories, or google for the source of the potential information. I tend to do that as a matter of routine, but it does not matter too much. In this case, I had as a matter of curiosity --previously to your post-- read the information posted on the site you linked to and clicked through the broken links to the source of their “2010-2011 research” for the 12 colleges, clicked to one of the working links for Harvard that discussed the exclusions and differences between “bottom” and “top” surgeries. A different tack to Brown’s own description of the coverage. </p>
<p>All in all, the article could be entirely accurate or partially true. Insurance coverages do change often and maybe as often every year. Stanford recently changed from Aetna to eHealth, for instance.</p>
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<p>SRS isn’t a “non-essential surgery” in the eyes of the transgendered people who need one. It’s also not “cosmetic” surgery (or if you want to say it technically is, it’s in the same boat as women who get breast reconstruction after mastectomy or people who get facial reconstruction after an accident. Would we be against covering that?). By the time a person decides on SRS, they’ve often lived their entire lives feeling alienated in their body. They experience dysphoria. There is often great mental and emotional disturbance that can be mitigated by them having an SRS. And no, they can’t walk into a surgeon’s office and ask for one and then get it the next week. There’s a period of counseling that must be undertaken; at least 2 physicians (NOT the surgeon who does it) have to agree to it, and a counselor has to agree that there is a compelling mental health reason for a student to get the surgery, that the student cannot live with the way their body currently is. It’s not a decision that anyone can make lightly due to the numerous obstacles there are for that. In addition, SRS isn’t like a tattoo or a piercing - it’s not the kind of decision that non-transgendered people just make on an impulse or after a drunken bender or something. I have never read a story or heard of anyone who got an SRS and regretted it.</p>
<p>Yes, waiting for years to get SRS usually does have a financial component to it. It’s a combination of factors, but often even after transgendered people have the necessary approvals, they still have to wait because they can’t afford the procedure. Transgendered people are far more likely to be impoverished or low-income than cisgendered people - more likely to be homeless, at-risk, and without parental or family support, too. SRS is extremely expensive and many people spend years saving up for it.</p>
<p>As for the cost - health insurance often covers things that we don’t need to pay for ourselves. That’s the whole POINT of health insurance. That’s why currently, you don’t get to “opt in” to what you are willing to pay for or have covered. Then people would just opt out of everything that they are unlikely to need.</p>
<p>Prefrontal cortex (the part of the brain that considers the future and weighs decisions) doesn’t fully mature until age 25, but given that the age of majority is 18, we allow 18-25-year-olds to make TONS of decisions that will affect their futures without full prefrontal cortex. Besides, just because the PFC isn’t finished developing doesn’t mean that it isn’t <em>almost</em> finished or that young adults can’t control their impulses or make decisions. I am a grad student in psychology and I have close friends who study emotional development and PFC development in adolescents and young adults. By the time you are 18, there are only small changes that happen between 18-20 and 25. It’s not like you go from zero to 100 in those years. In fact, teenagers’ decision-making in the “cold” system (without the influence of peers) pretty much matches adults’ when they are 16 years old; I just saw a research presentation about this today.</p>
<p>Besides, it’s not like there will be hundreds of transgendered students a year flocking to Brown to get the procedure done. First of all, given their historically disadvantaged status they are less likely to gain admission to Brown anyway, so I would wager that around 1% of their student population is actually transgendered. And not every trans<em>person wants an SRS, and not every trans</em>person who wants SRS will complete the extensive counseling requirements by the time they are 21 and graduate. The ones who do likely have the support of their parents and family, because that would mean that they were in counseling since they were teenagers or before (and they had enough support to get into Brown in the first place). So this will probably translate to 1 or 2 students every couple of years (if that!) actually getting the surgery on this health insurance plan.</p>
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<p>Which makes it even more irresponsible to tack the added (expected) cost to a comprehensive insurance forced onto many. Unless one believe insurance companies are the latest good samaritans on earth! </p>
<p>Higher education might be the last industry that enjoys spending like drunken sailors, especially when spending the money bequeathed to them by people who would turn in their grave for the excesses, or when able to pass the proverbial buck to their so-called customers. </p>
<p>Schools should focus on providing an education, and stop trying to be glorified country clubs and attempt to correct all societal ills of a transient population that passes four years under their wings!</p>
<p>The article mentions something about the cost of the procedures being about $50,000. I doubt there are many students who would want the change. Thus, I doubt the cost of insurance to other students will be materially affected by adding this coverage. If few others are materially affected, I say adding the coverage is a good idea.</p>
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<p>Since early childhood I have felt that my nose does not fit my face, it does not fit my internal version of who I am…when will Brown cover Rhinoplasty? Oh, and my ears stick out, horribly, they affect my ability to function in society and when will Brown cover Ostoplasty. It is between me and my doctor…it is vital to my mental and physical well being…to not have it covered is obvious discrimination! </p>
<p>Consumers (smart ones) will vote with their dollars so this information is …well…priceless.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t surprise me if the students, few as they may be, who would opt for this surgery would be graduate students. Grad students can be at the university for 6+ years, they are older and more likely to know what they want to do, and they would have a freer schedule to work around.</p>
<p>I predict it may even be something insurers are required to cover in the future (and many plans are beginning to cover now). </p>
<p>For example, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled earlier this year (late 2012) that the state must pay for - and provide - sex reassignment surgery for an inmate (who is serving a life sentence for killing his/her wife).</p>
<p>See: [Federal</a> judge rules state must provide sex reassignment surgery for Michelle Kosilek, who was convicted of murdering his wife as a man - Boston.com](<a href=“http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/09/04/federal-judge-rules-state-must-provide-sex-reassignment-surgery-for-michelle-kosilek-who-was-convicted-murdering-his-wife-man/MlZBqancRyv1BK2pwviV5N/story.html]Federal”>http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/09/04/federal-judge-rules-state-must-provide-sex-reassignment-surgery-for-michelle-kosilek-who-was-convicted-murdering-his-wife-man/MlZBqancRyv1BK2pwviV5N/story.html)</p>
<p>(If you’re curious about the Kosilek case, a judge recently also awarded her legal team $700k for litigating the sex reassignment surgery case).</p>
<p>San Francisco’s public coverage plan also now covers sex reassignment surgery ([S.F</a>. health care to cover sex reassignment surgery - CBS News](<a href=“http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57547934/s.f-health-care-to-cover-sex-reassignment-surgery/]S.F”>http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57547934/s.f-health-care-to-cover-sex-reassignment-surgery/)) as does California’s Medi-Cal (low-income) health plan. Cigna apparently covers it too (according to Google, know-er of all knowledge ;).</p>
<p>Brown is likely/probably responding to some pressure on campus to cover this service.</p>
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<p>Is it even anywhere close to that many?</p>
<p>According to [url=<a href=“http://www.susans.org/reference/lothsrs.html]this[/url”>http://www.susans.org/reference/lothsrs.html]this[/url</a>], there are only about 30,000 transgender people (or about 0.01% of the US population if they are all in the US, of which 3,000 to 10,000 have had reassignment surgery (or about 0.001% to 0.003% of the US population if they are all in the US).</p>
<p>If we multiply the cost of reassignment surgery ($50,000 to $75,000) by the portion of students getting it (0.00001 to 0.00003 for 0.001% to 0.003%, if we assume a similar proportion to the overall population), we get $0.50 to $2.25 per student. Perhaps Brown (and various other universities and big companies) believe that this is an acceptable cost in order to be perceived as being accepting of LGBTQ persons.</p>
<p>Comprehensive insurance policies cover a lot of things that aren’t life-threatening or even particularly severe. My plan covers the acne medication I use, and while acne is defined as a disease, that’s pretty clearly cosmetic. It would also cover me if I decided to go to a psychologist just because I was feeling a little blue or anxious and wanted someone to talk to. I would guess that feeling like you were born in the wrong body - whether we consider that a mental or a physical problem - is more serious than either of those things.</p>
<p>As for the age issue, I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was pretty certain of my gender by the time I was 18. And while I’ll frankly admit to not understanding a lot about being transgendered, I’m pretty sure trans people are as well. This isn’t something people do on a whim. Some transmen and woman register extreme distress over their birth gender from early childhood. Whether I understand it or not - and I’m not sure that anyone can unless they’ve experienced it - it is real, and it has a major impact on these people’s lives. </p>
<p>I would add given the rates of suicide in the trans population, this surgery might well be life-saving.</p>
<p>I wonder if some of the parents involved might be surprised to find out that Johnny left for school at the beginning of the semester and Joann returned home at the end?</p>
<p>What exactly happens if you flunk out part way through this process?</p>
<p>Sex reassignment surgery is not something people do just for the hell of it or because it is cheap. If anyone takes advantage of Brown’s new offering, it will be because they really want to–not because going to Brown makes it cheaper to change sexes.</p>
<p>Many counselors and medical professionals who specialize in transgender issues are of the opinion that the process of transition can safely begin as early as 12-13 in some cases. Gender dysphoria and transgender identification are real things, not phases or whims. There are professionals trained to assess that and to make sure they’re doing what is best for the patient.</p>
<p>I know several people at my school who have undergone similar procedures before the age of 18 and they are all much happier now than they ever were before they transitioned. In light of the extreme emotional anguish their situations brought them in the past, they would all laugh at the suggestion that they should have waited 10 more years (or whatever arbitrary age requirement you want to set) before they could bring their bodies in alignment with their self-conception.</p>
<p>In summary, the objections raised in this thread are for the most part invalid. Good on Brown.</p>
<p>This is NOT cosmetic surgery. Little kids attempt suicide because they can’t deal with the gender issue. I have a dear friend from college who would like to cross over (but can’t afford it) and my son has a friend from high school who has made the transition.</p>
<p>Great that some of you people have this all figured out.</p>
<p>What’s nuts is that the people who are up in arms about the minor cost of an extension of health insurance to cover a condition recognized by the medical community wouldn’t notice or care if tuition were increased by a similar amount to re-sod the football field or add a pizza oven to the cafeteria. It boggles the mind.</p>
<p>This post was edited for courtesy violations. Future posts that characterize divergent arguments and opinions as ignorant will be deleted in their entirety. Repeated violators will be suspended. </p>
<p>Here is an excerpt of our TOS</p>
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<p>Thanks, juillet. </p>
<p>Certainly at the women’s colleges, there have been those who entered as female and transitioned to male (though whether or not they had the surgery, I don’t know). Indeed, a few years back, Smith College’s class president was a male of Asian descent who had entered Smith as a female. </p>
<p>I can’t imagine the mental anguish of having the feeling you were in the wrong body and I don’t minimize it at all. This is real, not just a cutesy whim.</p>