While the LGBT community is sure to be cheering a recent ruling, I see another nail in Medicare’s coffin. To anyone even slightly informed, it’s obvious Medicare is in huge financial trouble. So much so that the last 5 years have been riddled with demands for healthcare reform and constant revamping of Medicare benefits offered in an attempt to keep the program sustainable.
Before retiring from healthcare in 2014, I was abreast of the increasingly difficult changes and requirements medical facilities were facing when attempting to obtain adequate Medicare reimbursement for services provided to their senior population. Therefore, when I hear of a case giving additional benefits for non-life-sustaining, elective procedures, it leaves me in utter disbelief.
However, when it comes to getting what you want for free, the entitlement mentality makes it difficult to see a “win” as the huge problem it actually is for the rest of society as a whole.
Let me introduce you to Tranny Granny! Denee Mallon just made history in Chicago. According to NBC, the then 74-year-old transgender woman underwent a milestone sex reassignment surgery she’d sought for decades.
“Here I am, finally, after all these years,” Mallon said. “It happened.”
NBC goes on to explain, “[Mallon’s] operation will be one of the first paid for by Medicare after she won a challenge in May to end the government insurance program’s ban on covering such procedures for transgender individuals. Mallon’s victory opened the door for other seniors to access this care and may influence whether more insurers – private and public – will cover them. LGBT advocates also hailed her case as another step forward to securing equal rights for transgender people.”
While the LGBT community is jumping for joy and leftists use the term ‘victory’ in this case, it is nothing short of a defeat. Medicare struggles to provide necessary, life saving medical care to its beneficiaries, yet we are going to add another expense — one provided by tax payers, one which is elective.
As I type those words, I already see the transgenders and their supporters banging on their keyboards to “educate” me on the procedure and argue the word “elective,” to which I’d just like to point out that this individual lived 74 years as a man, married three times — 3 women, and had 5 children, so the “need” to become a woman was not a “need” at all, but a preference. Furthermore, major surgery in the elderly population comes with its own risks. From a healthcare standpoint, this is indeed an elective surgery — whether the LGBT community and their supporters like it or not.
Now, while I strongly oppose Medicare paying for such a procedure, I feel it is none of my business if people choose to spend their money on any cosmetic surgery they wish and can afford. As a matter of fact, paying for the surgery was something Mallon was willing to do at one time.
For Mallon, life – work, five kids and three marriages – had gotten in the way of having sex reassignment surgery. When she could afford it in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she couldn’t get her doctors to approve it. They balked, she said, because she was having sex with women – which they felt was inconsistent with her needing the operation. By the time she got the okay in the late 1980s, she could no longer afford it.
The emphasis added above is just more evidence of the debatable “need” trangenders claim. Also, you would think if it was so desperately necessary, the funds for it wouldn’t have disappeared in less than a decade. One would think that care would be taken to keep the funds secure and available when fighting to find a doctor willing to do a “necessary” surgery.
While some studies (significantly based solely on self reporting of how the trangender feels) suggest that gender reassignment surgery provides mental health benefits, the same argument can be made about any cosmetic procedure and self-esteem, which is the other reason this is NOT a ‘victory.’ It is a dangerous precedent.
Where does one draw the line? Personally, I think a tummy tuck would greatly help my view of self, something I can’t exactly attain with exercise alone after numerous abdominal surgeries. Should tax payers be forced to pay for it because it would make me feel better emotionally? I think not.
Gender reassignment surgery IS cosmetic, is it not? Are they not having surgery to make the outside appearance fit what they feel they are on the inside? (Back to my tummy tuck — pretty sure I’m a stunning, flat-tummied girl on the inside without the scares and other lasting effects of the necessary surgeries I’ve endured! *Sarcasm of course.*)
We’ve just opened a huge can of worms. Consider these points made by NBC with emphasis added by this writer:
Male-to-female transitions can run about $25,000; for female-to-male transitions it’s around $100,000.
The hope, transgender advocates say, is that the Medicare decision will encourage more Medicaid programs and private insurers to offer coverage.
Dr. Marci Bowers, a pelvic and gynecologic surgeon who has performed more than 3,000 sex reassignment-related surgeries, said she has been getting “scores” of inquiries every week from Medicare patients since the decision.
In summary, we have an expensive surgery, a benefit that supporters want to see added to all programs, with many eager to use said benefit… Meaning, this is likely to become a huge expense for insurers. What do insurers do with their huge expenses? Pass it on to the consumer.
If we’ve learned anything from all the healthcare reform since the introduction of Obamacare, it should be that nothing is free. These surgeries cost money, and it is being taken from an already failing program. If it’s not free and someone has to pay for it, guess what, that’s not the small LGBT community, but the rest of us, whether that’s by taxes or a decrease in benefits offered to others.
Call me cold-hearted, closed-minded, or a bigot, but I am certainly not cheering this as a victory when our veterans struggle to receive adequate benefits that they’ve earned. While others are left without necessities, I have a hard time celebrating money from our taxes being given for an individual’s preferential body modification.
Is this a victory or another nail in Medicare’s coffin and more evidence of the entitlement mentality that will cause our social programs to fail?