Let people understand something about trans people

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Yes. A lot of people out of transphobia and ignorance I would expect to be opposed. If, however, you look at the people who have look at the evidence in detail, you will tend to find much more support. You would also tend to find court rulings supporting it.



No. They don't. Having the same level of healthcare benefits means their needs are all being met. Different needs mean different ways of meeting them, but it should not be judged based on a one-size-fits-all program; the program must meet each individual's needs. Having the same level of healthcare benefits is not occurring for people with gender dysphoria who need surgery. Their medical needs are being neglected.

Alas, we talk past each other. You think it's just cosmetic and unnecessary and that people with gender dysphoria can live just fine without it. The evidence is against you, but I don't think you care. You remind me of the definition of a crank, which is a man who cannot be turned.

You totally missed the logical fallacy that I was deliberately imitating, the logical fallacy that you used first. It went straight over your head.

Try reading this:

http://gretachristina.typepad.com/greta ... s-why.html

I saw the false analogy, though.



Actually, the staw men she attacks have some valid points. If the religious people she's preaches her atheism to haven't tried to convert her, they're not obliged to justify their views to her.

The fallacy is this: Problem A must be held off until problem B is solved, because problem B is more severe.

Did I really need to spell that out for you?

Problem A should be held of if it prevents the solution of problem B, because problem B is more severe.

Coverage for SRS does not prevent coverage for other procedures. That is false.

Given that healthcare and many other public institutions are under a tight budget, it does.

Oh, I see. The government in question doesn't ensure it's well-funded enough to meet the needs of the people it is to serve and decides it wants to play people with various needs against each other, in a divide-and-conquer-sorta-way.

Gotcha.

Check this out, about gender dysphoria:

http://freethoughtblogs.com/zinniajones ... dysphoria/

People aren't even aware gender dysphoria can cause that. And I'm looking at some of that. Darn, that stuff looks like it could easily drive someone to suicide without 'em even being aware it was cuz of the gender dysphoria.

Like look at this:

That's some messed up stuff for someone to go through.

I can identify with a lot of it.

Obviously, gender dysphoria ends up being a whole lot more than just simple unhappiness over gender.

Kurgan,

Please accept my apologies for the anger I have shown in this thread. You see, I was entitled in attitude. I believed that I was being unjustly deprived of something that belonged to me, namely, sex reassignment surgery. I was wrong to believe it. You are correct. No one is entitled to that and it is a waste of taxpayer money to provide it.

The doctors that support are wrong, just like the doctors that support the soft bipolar spectrum. It's one of those crazy fads that can overtake medicine, especially psychiatry, sometimes.

Accepting that I am not entitled to it makes me feel a lot more peaceful.

My apologies. I had an attitude of entitlement, which led to anger. You just need to be a big person and accept you ain't getting surgery. I wasn't being a very big person in this thread as of late. I've since accepted that I am in no way entitled to it, and neither is anybody else.

And yes, it needs more study. The doctors pushing are just like the doctors pushing the soft bipolar spectrum.

From my perspective, your approach on health policy is quite wrong.

The decision about whether or not a given course of therapy is medically necessary belongs in two pairs of hands alone: the patient, and the physician. Period. No stranger to that relationship should have any input into that question.

Once a course of treatment has been decided as medically necessary, it then becomes a reasonable question about how to create a system of equitable access to resources (be they real estate, specialized professionals, equipment or pharmaceuticals). Physicians should work collegially to ensure that medical priorities are respected, to be sure. But the existence of priorities does not in any way diminish the medical necessity of therapies that present lower priorities.

The question of budgets is, of course, a vexing one. But we must always understand that public policy decision cannot ever be permitted to allow questions of medical priority to corrupt questions of medical necessity.

The welfare states of Canada and Europe are coming to a close:

http://www.newgeography.com/content/004 ... fare-state

Prioritization is starting to become very important, and I tell you for a tiny group like transsexuals needing such an expensive procedure, they make for a very low priority.

I doubt that, for the following reasons:

Total expenditure:
If one was to prioritize health care from an economic perspective, one would need to look at total expenditure, and not just cost per procedure. Since there are so few patients who qualify for SRS, the total cost of treatment becomes almost completely irrelevant to total health care expenditure

Relevant alternatives:
If one was to prioritize health care from a medical perspective, one would need to look at relevant alternatives to treatment. Since no such alternative to SRS currently exists for those who qualify for treatment, it would be medically inadvisable to restrict access in these cases.

Publicity:
Individuals with gender dysphoria might be a tiny group, but there is significant media awareness about their situation. This is both because of the LGBT rights movement and their detractors.

Now, contrast SRS with operations for spinal disk herniation. These are quite costly ($ 6,900 in Denmark presently), but not as costly as SRS at $ 33,000. In Denmark, it is estimated that the annual need for surgery for spinal disk herniation amounts to 6,000 procedures, resulting in a total cost of approx. $ 41.4 million annually. If the number of these procedures could be reduced by just 1 percent, the money saved would be more than enough to finance all annual SRS treatments in Denmark.

And unlike SRS, there are actually often relevant alternatives to back surgery. Conservative treatment is often as good as (and sometimes even cheaper) than surgery in these cases, and vastly cheaper. Furthermore, there rarely is anything "political" about back surgery or alternatives. It's just another treatment.

It should come as no surprise, then, that there is significant focus - both from an economic and a medical perspective - In Denmark to ensure, that back surgery is only provided to those who stand to benefit from this procedure compared to conservative treatment. For SRS, there is actually political pressure to increase the availability of the procedure... and it would barely even register in total health care expenditure if SRS was made more available.

Summary:
So, anyone who was *serious* about prioritization in health care would probably barely even lift an eyebrow about SRS. He or she would focus on other treatments resulting in larger total expenditure and with a higher economic and medical potential for prioritizing.

Which leads me to conclude that those who advocate against coverage for sex reassignment surgery for cost control reasons are either:

• deluding themselves into thinking that this will have any noteworthy effect on health care expenditure and taxes, or
• dishonest, and simply using the cost control argument as a smoke screen to hide their moral disapproval of transsexualism, or
• both.

Well, in reality, probably roughly 1 in 500 of the population or so is transsexual. Extrapolate that to the U.S. population and you get 12 billion dollars. I think most people would object to this, as they aren't particularly enthusiastic at helping transgender people. Case in point, my thread in another forum where I recounted my experiences of pain, but no one comes in to comfort me or give tips on what to do. Nope. If anyone talks to me, they talk down to me. If they wouldn't even try to comfort me or give tips on what to do, then why would they want to pay 12 billion effing dollars for people like me to get surgery? Yeah right!

Plus, just because there is a movement of doctors toward something means nothing. There's been a group of doctors pushing the soft bipolar spectrum for quite a while now. Recently, though, it's been found that those researchers have been using circular reasoning to redefine certain depressive symptoms as "bipolarity specifiers." Many other doctors are like, huh? What's this crud?

Considering the way a lot of doctors are opposed to coverage for sex change surgery, and it's just a group of doctors supporting it, one could argue the same sort of thing could be playing out here.

Actually, 0.4% of the population is transsexual. Nobody said that transsexuals do not deserve help, but the price tags for SRS and feminization surgery are high. Hormones are cheap, though. Nobody in this thread is saying that you are a freak or anything like that, but both the American and the European economies have seen better days.