By Jordan Graham
Boston Herald
BOSTON, Mass. — Bay State taxpayers could be on the hook for $2.6 million annually to pay for transgender-related health costs after the Patrick administration yesterday said it will seek to have medically necessary treatments covered by insurance.
The administration said MassHealth, the state’s Medicaid program, will publish proposed regulations to extend coverage for treatments — including gender-reassignment surgery and hormone therapy — for enrollees who have gender identity disorder.
“I am proud to be part of a commonwealth that puts equality as its top priority,” Gov. Deval Patrick said in a statement.
The state expects it will cost $2.6 million annually, based on a similar policy in California, which along with Vermont are the only other states that provide such coverage.
At least one lawmaker, however, balked at shouldering that additional cost.
“We should not be spending our tax dollars on these kinds of procedures,” state Rep. James J. Lyons Jr. (R-Andover) said. “We absolutely should not be doing it.”
It’s unclear what effect the policy change will have on convicted wife-killer Michelle Kosilek’s efforts to have taxpayers fund his gender-reassignment surgery. A federal judge ruled in 2012 that the state must pay for it, but the Department of Correction appealed and both parties are now awaiting a ruling.
“It’s really hard for the state to say on the one hand they’re going to cover it for the Medicaid population, but not for prisoners,” said Renee Landers, a Suffolk University law professor.
Terrel Harris, spokesman for the Executive Office of Public Safety, which oversees the Department of Corrections, said the state’s opposition to Kosilek’s surgery is about keeping him safe in prison, not whether it is medically necessary.
But Kosilek’s lawyer sees the policy shift as another arrow in his legal case.
“By the Patrick administration’s own standards now, this treatment is something that should be recognized and given,” said attorney Joseph Sulman. “It’s a sad irony that the Patrick administration is still fighting this.”
The administration is urging the Group Insurance Commission, which covers city and town workers, to approve similar changes. And the state Division of Insurance will advise insurers that they can’t deny services based only on a person being identified as belonging to the other sex.
Anita Phoenix, a Cambridge transgender woman who sued MassHealth for not covering her gender-reassignment surgery, welcomed the change.
“It’s great that (the state is) finally understanding what is going on,” she said.
GLAD attorney Ben Klein said many who need the treatment have not been able to afford it.
“People who are transgender have been suffering greatly because they can’t get the health care they need,” Klein said. “(They) will now get to play by the same rules.”