Health insurance regulators in Vermont are on the cusp of changing Medicaid rules to allow transgender youth below the age of 21 to have gender-changing surgery on the taxpayer dime.
A new rule proposed at the end of May will allow children and teens covered by Medicaid and who have parental consent to begin sex reassignment surgeries at younger ages, said Nissa James, Department of Vermont Health Access policy director, reported the Burlington Free Press.
The sex reassignment surgeries covered by Medicaid include 16 types of genital surgery as well as breast augmentation or mastectomy.
According to the report, Dr. Rachel Inker, who heads the Transgender Health Clinic at the Community Health Centers of Burlington, welcomed the new rule.
“Having young people have to wait until they were 21 just didn’t really make any sense,” Inker said.
The Free Press continued:
The choice to have surgery is a personal one that should be explored in every age group, Inker said, although people who are young enough can be given puberty-blocking treatments to inhibit development of secondary sex characteristics like breasts or facial hair.
Older teens may have already developed those characteristics, Inker said, and face going to college or getting a job while their gender identity and gender presentation are mismatched.
She cited young transgender men wishing to get top surgery to remove breast tissue as an example of the kind of procedures commonly requested by teenagers between 16 and 18.
In order to receive the Medicaid coverage for sex reassignment surgeries, requirements include a clinical evaluation stating the surgery is a “medical necessity” and a referral from a “qualified mental health professional.”
The documentation of the “qualified mental health professional” is to include “diagnosis of persistent gender dysphoria” and documentation of the child’s “participation in a treatment plan in consolidating gender identity.” In addition, the mental health professional must demonstrate the child has been counseled with regard to “treatment options and implications.”
Vermont is one of 18 states in which militant LGBTQ activists have been successful in convincing enough lawmakers that normal counseling for children and teens who claim to experience discomfort with their biological sex must be banned.
The laws that ban so-called “conversion therapy” seek to crush the notion that children who claim to be a gender that is incompatible with their biological sex are psychologically impaired. Despite clinical evidence that many of these children come from families with significant psychological dysfunction, LGBTQ activists have pushed the narrative that the high rate of suicidal ideation found in this population is due solely to the lack of immediate affirmation of the perceived gender identity.
A study published in August by Dr. Lisa Littman, an assistant professor of behavioral and social sciences at Brown University, found 87 percent of teens were reported by their parents to have “come out” as transgender after increased time spent on social media and the Internet and after “cluster outbreaks” of gender dysphoria among their groups of friends.
Most of the teens who claimed to be transgender had also already been identified with at least one mental health disorder.
The study drew the ire of LGBTQ activists.
4thWaveNow is a group of “parent-skeptics who question medicalizing gender-atypical youth.”
State of Vermont moves to eliminate any lower age limit for SRS and all other transition-related surgeries, such that a minor of any age can get the surgeries with parental consent. Medicaid (public insurance for low income people) will pay for it.https://t.co/XTBK7Ox4sY
— 4thWaveNow (@4th_WaveNow) June 13, 2019
So it's within the realm of possibility that one of the toddlers identified as "trans" by Woke parents and their doctors could be a candidate for genital surgery. Why not? If they're "true trans," what would be the reason to wait? Cue the next specialty: Preschool SRS surgeons.
— 4thWaveNow (@4th_WaveNow) June 13, 2019
The genius child psychologists & pediatricians who egg parents on to "affirm" their trans tots are why Vermont is making SRS legal and acceptable for **any age child**–at taxpayer expense. The hubris of US gender specialists is what is driving this. And the @AmerAcadPeds
— 4thWaveNow (@4th_WaveNow) June 13, 2019
Source: Breitbart
H/T: Univ. of Rochester Medical Center
Image: Meaww
What moron would do that to a child?