Is Berkeley Ready to Pay for Sex-Change Operations?

Seems to me that it would be cheaper to cure the underlying problem and get them couseling for gender identity disorder.

You can slap a duck bill on a turkey, but it's still a turkey, not a duck.

 

The underlying problem is not known.

Counselling for GID either includes guidance for how to go about getting medical procedures or it is the worthless sort of 'conversion' that gay people have been subjected to to make them straight. Just as UA's lame joke shows, trans people are basically iust a few decades behind homosexuals; I hope it won't be too much longer until they are likewise treated by most people as just people.

 

Nope, they're people with severe mental issues that need to be treated. They weren't born as the opposite sex, they were born with mental problems.

We should accept people with gender dysmorphia as being normal the same day we say people with schizophrenia are 'just that way' and we should learn to be tolerant. Respect their decision to remain that way.

Sorry Shep. Man, I've always thought the world of you. You've always been one of my favorite posters here and always will be, but you were born a dude, dude. Y chromosome, testosterone, dick, balls, you've got them all and are what you were always meant to be.

 

So that's all you're saying? Merely that there seems to be a real problem for some of these people to face life? You're not arguing that health-care has a responsibility to pay for the sex-change operation? If so, then I have no quibble with your argument.

 

Boy, wouldn't that be awesome? Reveal that you're depressed and considering suicide and get prescribed antidepressants? Then when you snuff it, it is "if only we'd tried harder"!

Nope. I can't see at all how efforts to curb Global Warming could go awry.

 

Alright, I've given you the benefit of the doubt, but you can fuck the hell off with this entitled bullshit. You do not get to link cosmetic surgery with mental health when you're using taxpayer money. It is an unnecessary indulgence, they can be prevented from killing themselves without it, neither happiness nor contentment are claims on the products of your neighbors' labor, and you are not oppressed by an uncaring, prejudicial society by way of it refusing to fund elective body modifications.

 

And it's certainly an effective cure. After all, if Little Billy dies of cancer, Little Billy ain't got cancer no mo'.

 

I don't disagree there - just thought the comparison was poor.

 

if i had one tiny chance in hell of succeeding...I just as well commit to playing the powerball, it would probably have a greater chance of success.

 

This is a simple question of numbers.

The city has unfunded liabilities to its workers of $252 million, at 1500 workers that's $168,000 a pop. Setting aside another $20,000 for gender reassignment surgery would put the unfunded liabilities up to $282 million.

But let's look at that number, $168,000 in unfunded liabilities per city worker, that means they're getting several thousand dollars more in funded liabilities and pay. These workers never had it so good.

 

I'm not necessarily arguing for the benefit BUT....Counseling and long term observation of the sort you mention would eventually cost as much or more than the surgery.

If a counselor costs, say, $200 a session (conservative estimate for Berkley) then one session a week for 2 years costs MORE than $20,000 - that's not counting the observation.

I suppose one could argue for the "you're on your own" approach, I'm undecided.


BUT of you are doing a cost/benefit analysis on which is the least burdensome (to the taxpayer) choice, it's CLEARLY HRT and GRS over long-term "live with it" treatment.

In fact, one of the big arguments people make (convincingly IMO) why insurance companies SHOULD cover the procedure is because the relatively low demand for it (as opposed to many other more expensive procedures) combined with the cost of treating the people by some alternative method (as opposed to HRT/GRS) make it a financially acceptable choice.

 

Oh, and by the way - GRS is NOT "cosmetic surgery"

Boob job? yeah. Facial feminization? Absolutely. But GRS is, if you are going to address the condition at all, TREATMENT just as much as the hormones are.

 

Guys, this is Berkeley, they are all nuts up there. If you aren't nuts, you are not allowed to live there.

 

I'm glad Pruf is on our side here and I hesitate to voice any qualifications on his point (my bias showing I guess) but...

I'd have to suggest that the high suicide rate (which I think in the proper context IS a valid argument as he uses it) has to do with societal acceptance far more than lack of surgical correction. I know from my own experience which is surely not universal but is probably representative, that while I have a great longing to have the plumbing put right and am distressed that no avenue presents itself to make that happen, that sort of depression that can be suicidal in nature arises very much from the mentality of "I have to hide my true self from the world lest everyone think I'm a freak and a perv" (or alternately "God hates me")

I do think it's a shakey argument to suggest that only surgical correction mitigates the potential for self destructive actions. However, as noted above, i would argue that IF you are going to treat it via insurance or benefits AT ALL, that surgical correction ends up being the most cost efficient avenue.


(As an example regarding costs - gastro-intestinal bypass surgery for the obese is pretty much exactly the same price as GRS)

 

That's an opinion. The whole "man born with a woman's brain" science is not 100% settled. It's a theory with some supporting evidence, which people find appealing as an explanation because it serves their preconceived notions. Even if you make the leap to accepting it as complete and airtight, it does not follow that it must be "treated" with radical hormone changes and physical mutilations. You could just as easily argue that it must be "treated" with therapy geared towards helping people learn to accept the difference between their mental identity and the physical structure of their body.

 

that reasoning is flawed. Before the mid-20th century, a person born with this particular defect would, if they be suicidal, most of the time be dead before they bred (albeit perhaps by risky behavior as in warfare or something rather than direct "eat a bullet" methods) because they would have no recourse for their misery and they would dare not let it be known.

Other than a precious few rich elite people who culd afford to be seen as "eccentric" there was no out. if this defect could be so easily bred out of existence there should be far less of it now.

 

My guess is that you are right on the money, here. But that completely takes away the validity of the "We should fund this procedure because these people will commit suicide otherwise" argument. If you are correct, as I think you probably are, then the operation itself or lack thereof is not the real problem. Furthermore, although the operation might make it easier to hide the change in sexual identity, the problem of social acceptance (including by yourself) remains whole: Even with the operation, you still have to hide what you are. You merely have a better chance of getting away with it. (Though not to yourself, for those who cannot accept themselves and/or do not believe that God can accept them.)

 

there is not a shread of medical evidence - not even a reasonable hypothesis - that there is an effective treatment to "cure" gender identity disorder (or whatever they are calling it next week)

there's no counseling methodology or drug treatment or any such thing that makes it "go away" - the best you get are coping techniques which delay the inevitable.

and here's why that's bad news: when you get any sort of advice, religious or psychiatric or whatever, that leads you to believe it will "go away" or "be cured" then you do things like go out and get married and have kids - then when it inevitably does NOT go away, you end up fucking up many other lives besides your own because you attempted to "cope"


the only "cure" for GID is GRS

 

That's a massive leap. The operation doesn't change gender. It only changes appearance. So you're reducing the mental disorder to a matter of outward appearance rather than biological reality. That doesn't serve the contention that it's a treatment for a medical condition very well.

 

I don't disagree that it's a mental problem

If there was a medical treatment for GID as there is for schizophrenia or depression or bi-polar then, yeah, apply it. None exists.

And how would you address those people who's bodies were born not clearly male or female? There are a half-dozen or more separate conditions in which that is the case.

Further, by what logic do we argue that the genitals can be mal-formed, or that the chromosome pattern can be mal-formed, or that the hormone receptors in the body's cells can be mal-formed (all documented medical conditions present from birth) but the gender-specific structure of the brain CAN'T be mal-formed?

 

Wait, what? you think ALL of those 1500 employees are gonna need GRS?

$30 million divided by 1500 =$20k

That's rather stupid, if I may say so. Actually, by the statistical incidence of gender dysphoria, all things being equal, there shouldn't be more than one or two in 1500. But this is Berkley so lets say it's skewed. let's say there's five times the norm, or 10 such employees.

That adds $200k to the cities unfunded liability, not $30 million.

Put another way: In a city of over $100,000 residents, it adds about $2 a year to the average share per citizen.

 

Not paying for it for them isn't "preventing them from transitioning". It makes the responsibility for acquiring and attaining treatment, theirs. They are free to do so at any time they like.

And it isn't a "death rate"...it's a suicide rate. Let's stop pretending suicide isn't a choice and that these people can't choose not to fucking kill themselves.

I sympathize with their difficulties, but it in no way makes it reasonable for taxpayers to pay for their, frankly, elective procedures. Particularly with special funds just for this specific surgery. What would stop every single employee with any kind of medical issue from expecting Berkely to pay their bills after they start funding this?? Why gender reassignment and not transplants for example? What about breast enhancement? Most insurance won't pay unless it's cancer related so why should trans folks get a set and not that poor woman born with barely an A cup whose psyche aches because she doesn't feel like a real woman? :canofworms:

 

In the abstract i would agree - except that has been tried for decades and resulting in massive and utterly complete failure. The only "coping" therapy that has ever shown ANY results is heavy religious indoctrination and that only has a nominal success rate.

 

I base that on the testimony of those who have had the procedure. Whatever the mental mechanisms involved, post op women (I say women because the surgery for F2M is much less successful physically) almost universally (barring a tiny tiny handful who have the surgery for the wrong reasons...probably less tan .01%) agree that the balance of their life they are "normal women"

In fact, from the testimony I've seen, it takes a remarkably short period of time to get to the place where you forget what having outdoor plumbing was even like. When you can look in the mirror and see a body that aligns with the identity you know to be true, there is no dyspepsia anymore - no sense of "unnaturalness"


for them, it IS "biological reality" (it's not like a natal woman ever looks in the mirror and contemplates her ovaries, or the structure of her DNA). for all intents and purposes, the outward appearance IS the true gender and the biological reality. Other than for some relatively rare medical treatment, there is no sense in which the makeup of your chromosomes has any impact on yur life. Certainly not even remotely to the degree of what you LOOK like.

And "outward appearance" goes beyond just being comfortable with what you see in the mirror. It's a matter of safety and security, to say nothing of mental "comfort" (a poor word for it but I can't think of another right now) when you are in the public restroom, the gym, the doctor's office, the airport, etc.

 

Which could be interpreted to mean that people end up happier when they recieve what they've decided was a necessity of their contentment just as easily as it could be taken to mean that a problem was corrected.

Like an amputee forgetting what it's like to wiggle their toes? This doesn't seem to argue for or against.

So now the taxpayers must fund elective surgery so that cross dressers don't get beat up for walking into the ladies' room? No, I don't accept that. There are ways of dealing with this that don't impose on others to that degree.

 

Gender identity disorder is a made-up illness, like carpal tunnel syndrome.

 

with respect, "crossdresser" is a wildly inaccurate term - if i didn't know your views it wuld border on insulting but i know yo meant nothing by it.

for the record - "crossdressers" do what they do as a hobby, for fun or for sexual gratification - they do NOT want to alter their body.

now, as for actual transgender folk - yes, I risk arrest or assault every time I use the ladies room, but neither can I enter the men's room looking like a woman (which I do - I once had a security guard stop me from entering a men's room when I though I wasn't trying to look fem)

Are there other ways to deal with this - like providing a third, non-gender specific restroom? sure - if you want to mandate that EVERY public place do so and I'm betting yo don't want that.

Again - yall seem to think I'm arguing FOR the Berkley funding - I'm not necessarily, i can see arguments both ways. I'm just clarifying some of the reasoning here. My argument would be for insurance companies to cover it.

 

Really not caring what words people choose for describing themselves.

Tough shit. The world doesn't owe you accommodation. Hold it until you get home, or dress like a dude and use the men's room.

The burden is not on me, any private company, or collective society to attend to these special needs.

I don't have a problem with private insurance covering it if they choose to do so, but I do have a problem with forcing it on them.

 

If i had a say in it my response would be, you want to change your gender? Awesome, you better work hard to pay for it because I'm not going to. I think that SF, pays the cost for their city and county employees to have gender changes.

 

Someone who seeks medical transition does so in a similar way that people with epilepsy or depression or any or a myriad of other non immediately life-threatening medical and/or psychological illnesses seek treatment. It is not about cosmetics much differently than is seeking correction for a harmless birth defect. And a trans person doesn't choose to be trans, but people can choose to bear children, participate in dangerous sports, have sex as an impotent old man, use recreational drugs, and glut and sloth their way to heart disease and stroke but all that can be covered by health insurance. So it doesn't make sense to exclude trans treatments by rationalizing it as a 'choice'.

If GDI is a mental disorder, then it is pretty much the only one we know of where the treatment (i.e. letting the person transition medically, socially, legally, etc) generally works. Why would you deny someone coverage for what works for this one disorder while covering treatments for so many other physical and mental disorders?