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Need to Put Pressure on US Health Insurance to Cover Surgical Castration for Transgenders, Says Report

by Lakshmi Gopal on Mar 1 2012 1:35 PM

 Need to Put Pressure on US Health Insurance to Cover Surgical Castration for Transgenders, Says Report
Transgender people in the US who choose to perform self-castrations, often face significant financial barriers as elective castration is typically not covered under health insurance plans in the United States.
This was stated in an article 'Self-Castration by a Transsexual Woman: Financial and Psychological Costs: A Case Report' by Dr. Irwig and his co-authors recently in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

Dr. Irwig continued, '...They (patients) are often frustrated at the slow pace of their male-to-female transition.'

He further said, 'In order to reduce the number of self-castrations, urologists who are willing to perform surgery on transsexuals must be identified and more pressure needs to be put on health care and insurance companies to cover the procedure. These tactics are a few measures that can reduce the financial costs to patients and to the health care system.'

The team of researchers agreed that, ‘from a financial standpoint, an elective orchiectomy (surgical castration) could have cost the health care system significantly less than a hospital admission with its associated additional costs. From a patient safety standpoint, elective orchiectomy is preferable to self-castration which carries significant risks such as hemorrhage, disfigurement, infection, urinary fistulae, and nerve damage.’

It continues, ‘Healthcare providers of transsexual women should carefully explore patient attitudes toward self-castration and work toward improving access to elective orchiectomy to reduce the number of self-castrations and costs to the overall health care system. Further research on the financial implications of self-castration from different health care systems and from a series of patients is needed.’

The full article can be viewed here:http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1743-6109.2011.02621.x/abstract

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