Dana Contreras was named in this cool article by The Advocate about “the 10 most innovative companies and the LGBTs who got them to the top” – basically, she’s a smart one. So smart that she gets a lot of recruiting emails from potential employers, so she’s decided to take this otherwise awkward outreach from them to ask an important question, namely, if they offer trans inclusive health insurance.
Why? Because “this is some heinous bullshit and you need to know about it.”
Most places don’t. Even liberal institutions that should know better don’t realize, or don’t care, that their health insurance suppliers actively exclude coverage of even the basics of healthcare. I’m not talking about genital surgeries, but just hormones prescriptions and labs, and therapy. That is, a trans person can go to a therapist for depression, if that’s covered, but they can’t go to a therapist to talk about being trans, a pending transition, or even to process the enormous changes that come with transition.
Contreras calls it bullshit and I’ll second her. That is, a woman of a certain age who might be on HRT because it’s recommended by her doctor will have these blood tests covered, but a trans woman – who is usually on much higher doses of estrogen – won’t. And that, friends, is discrimination: when the exact same perks are offered to one kind of person and not to another kind of person for no apparent reason, no difference in cost, no anything but ignorance and prejudice.