Medicare will now cover sex-change operations for transgender people, the U.S. Department of Health and Services announced Friday.
The unprecedented decision overturns a 30-year ban that prevented Medicare, which offers health care to the elderly and disabled, from paying for sex reassignment surgeries. The department's Appeals Board, which lifted the ban, ruled that sex reassignment surgeries are medically necessary for those who do not identify with their original sex, the Associated Press reported.
"Sometimes I am asked aren't I too old to have surgery," Denee Mallon, a 74-year-old Army veteran who two years ago had her sex-change request denied, told the AP. "My answer is how old is too old?
"When people ask if I am too old, it feels like they are implying that it's a 'waste of money' to operate at my age. But I could have an active life ahead of me for another 20 years. And I want to spend those years in congruence and not distress," Mallon said.
The review board's ruling, however, does not mean Americans under Medicare will automatically have their sex reassignment surgeries paid for. Transgender people will have to prove surgery is medically necessary by providing documentation from doctors and mental health officials, Jennifer Levi, director of GLAD's Transgender Rights Project, told the AP.
"They should either get coverage or, at a minimum, receive an individualized review of the medical need for the specific procedure they seek, just like anyone seeking coverage for any other medical treatment," GLAD said in a statement obtained by the AP.
Since the ruling was issued by the federal government, other private insurance companies or those owned by the state could soon offer coverage for sex-change operations, transgender health supporters say.
Medicare provides health care to over 49 million Americans, but there are no official statistics on how many are transgendered. Transgender people make up an estimated 0.3 percent of all adults in the U.S., Gary Gates, a demographer at the LGBT think- tank The Williams Institute in California, told the AP.
