Recent lawsuits are directing states to include gender affirming surgeries in their Medicaid coverage and end a half-century of debate on directing taxpayer dollars toward transgender care.
A mishmash of state policies and a myriad of legal barriers still make getting coverage a challenge.
Seven states have policies in place barring Medicaid coverage for surgeries, despite a federal law that mandates the coverage. Many of these states, most recently Wisconsin, are seeing these decades-old laws overturned in court. Even in the 19 states with laws requiring Medicaid to cover transgender care—which encompasses over 20 different forms of facial, body, and ...