#healthcare(issue)

[gingersnapwolves]

So today I want to talk about puberty blockers for transgender kids, because despite being cisgender, this is a subject I’m actually well-versed in. Specifically, I want to talk about how far backwards things have gone.

This story starts almost 20 years ago, and it’s kind of long, but I think it’s important to give you the full history. At the time, I was working as an administrative assistant for a pediatric endocrinologist in a red state. Not a deep deep red state like Alabama, we had a little bit of a purple trend, but still very much red. (I don’t want to say the state at the risk of doxxing myself.) And I took a phone call from a woman who said, “My son is transgender. Does your doctor do hormone therapy?”

I said, “Good question! Let me find out.”

I went into the back and found the doctor playing Solitaire on his computer and said, “Do you do hormone therapy for transgender kids?” It had literally never come up before. He had opened his practice there in the early 2000s. This was roughly 2006, and the first time someone asked. Without looking up from his game of Solitaire, the doctor said, “I’ve never done it before, but I know how it works, so sure.”

I got back on the phone and told the mom, who was overjoyed, and scheduled an appointment for her son. He was the first transgender child we treated with puberty blockers. But not, by far, the first child we treated with puberty blockers, period. Because puberty blockers are used very commonly for children with precocious puberty (early-onset puberty). I would say about twenty percent of the kids our doctor treated were for precocious puberty and were on puberty blockers. They have been well studied and are widely used, safe, and effective.

Well. It turned out, the doctor I worked for was the only doctor in the state who was willing to do this. And word spread pretty fast in the tight-knit community of ‘parents of transgender children in a red state’. We started seeing more kids. A better drug came out. We saw some kids who were at the age where they were past puberty, and prescribed them estrogen or testosterone. Our doctor became, I’m fairly sure, a small folk hero to this community. 

Insurance coverage was a struggle. I remember copying articles and pages out of the Endocrine Society Manual to submit with prior authorization requests for the medications. Insurance coverage was a struggle for a lot of what we did, though. Growth hormone for kids with severe idiopathic short stature. Insulin pumps, which weren’t as common at the time, and then continuous glucose monitoring, when that came out. Insurance struggles were just part and parcel of the job.

I remember vividly when CVS Caremark, a pharmaceutical management company, changed their criteria and included gender dysphoria as a covered diagnosis for puberty blockers. I thought they had put the option on the questionnaire to trigger an automatic denial. But no - it triggered an approval. Medicaid started to cover it. I got so good at getting approvals with my by then tidy packet of articles and documentation that I actually had people in other states calling me to see what I was submitting (the pharmaceutical rep gave them my number because they wanted more people on their drug, which, shady, but sure. He did ask me if it was okay first).

And here’s the key point of this story:

At no point, during any of this, did it ever even occur to any of us that we might have to worry about whether or not what we were doing was legal.

It just never even came up. It was the medically recommended treatment so we did it. And seeing what’s happening in the UK and certain states in America is both terrifying and genuinely shocking to me, as someone who did this for almost fifteen years, without ever even wondering about the legality of it.

The doctor retired some years ago, at which point there were two other doctors in the state who were willing to prescribe the medications for transgender kids. I truly think that he would still be working if nobody else had been willing to take those kids on as patients. He was, by the way, a white cisgender heterosexual Boomer. I remember when he was introduced to the concept of ‘genderfluid’ because one of our patients on HRT wanted to go off. He said ‘that’s so interesting!’ and immediately went to Google to learn more about it. 

I watched these kids transform. I saw them come into the office the first time, sometimes anxious and uncertain, sometimes sullen and angry. I saw them come in the subsequent times, once they were on hormone therapy, how they gradually became happy and confident in themselves. I saw the smiles on their faces when I gave them a gender marker letter for the DMV. I heard them cheer when I called to tell them I’d gotten HRT approved by insurance and we were calling in a prescription. It was honestly amazing and I will always consider the work I did in that red state with those kids to be something I am incredibly proud of. I was honored to be a part of it.

When I see all this transgender backlash, it’s horrifying, because it was well on the way to become standard and accepted treatment. Insurances started to cover it. Other doctors were learning to prescribe it. And now … it’s fucking illegal? Like what the actual fuck. We have gone so far backwards that it makes me want to cry. I don’t know how to stop this slide. But I wrote this so people would understand exactly how steep the slide is.

[sallymew4]

a comment under one of Ben Shapiro’s latest videos that i like

[nando161mando]

I wonder if they cover lead poisoning

[transnest]

I got mad at the phobes in the notes, so f*ck it, transgender super sourcestorm

Every major health organisation supports trans healthcare

Regret for minors is incredibly rare

Regret in general is incredibly rare

Social support (friends, family) for youth is incredibly important

Gender affirming care is safe

Gender affirming care (including social transition) saves lives

Trans people are 4x more likely to be victims of assault

Deal with it. Trans rights are human rights.

[becomingvecna]

reblog if you think these are all valid reasons for a student or an employee to take a day off from their school or their job without their grades or paycheck being affected in any way:

- period cramps

- exhaustion, be it mental or physical

- depression, anxiety, and other mental health related issues

[chinchillacrossing]

Let's just call this what it is. It's abuse.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists have recommended that women are offered painkillers before IUD insertion. Here are just a handful of what women had to say about this news:

[miiaspeaks]

A million times better than that trump pic imo. picture of the year.

from bloomberg

[reasonsforhope]

"France became the first country in the world to make abortion a constitutional right Monday [March 4, 2024], with French lawmakers adopting the bill in a 780-72 vote in a move inspired by the U.S. reversal of Roe vs. Wade.

The law gives women a "guaranteed freedom" to choose for themselves if an abortion is the right choice to make.

The amendment won the support of the three-fifths of the 925 National Assembly and Senate members required to pass in an extraordinary afternoon session at the Palace of Versailles just outside Paris in a move that was overwhelmingly supported by the public.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said to those assembled in Congress Hall that "we owe a moral debt" to the women who had to suffer through illegal abortions in the past.

After the vote to approve the constitutional change, Paris' Eiffel Tower was lit with the words in French "my body my choice" in the country where abortion was first legalized in 1975, two years after the United States' first ruling on Roe vs. Wade...

While limiting abortion ranked very low on France's political agenda, lawmakers were prompted to take action to protect abortion rights in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court's overturning of the 1973 Roe ruling that legalized abortion. Subsequently, several American states have passed laws to restrict or outlaw the procedure.

"I say to all women within our borders and beyond, that today, the era of a world of hope begins," said Attal, who at 34 became the country's youngest prime minister.

This was the first time since 2008 that France took steps to change its constitution. There will be a ceremony to finalize the amendment on Friday [March 8, 2024], which is also International Women's Day."

-via UPI (United Press International), March 4, 2024

--

Note: It may be the first, but I am confident that it will not be the last!

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

Don't let republicans fool you with their national populism cause they do not give a single care for veterans who died and suffered for America. They would hollow out the VA and fill it corporate and political stooges who would blindly follow the GOP's bidding. Our government doesn't care enough for veterans and here we have Republicans confirming it, remember it was Biden who passed the CARE act. So remember a future where our soldiers suffer more than they already do is what the Republicans want.

[destielmemenews]

Dragoneer died of complications from a lung infection. His last social media posts detail a frustrating ordeal with his insurance and have ignited criticisms of the US healthcare system.

source 1

source 2

source 3

[johnny-depp-is-loved]

healthcare is basic human rights and it’s insane that we even had to say this

[mxmorbidmidnight]

In society one of the main forms of ableism I experience and observe is how someone’s personhood is reduced to their ability to do labour. How much they contribute to society and such. How people advocate for the government to not support disabled people, saying it’s a “waste of money” completely removing the people involved reducing them to terms used to describe animals and tax deductions. In calling for this you call for the death of disabled people. Disabled refugees are far less likely to be accepted as citizens, rather deported or left in detention. Myself and other disabled people have been repeatedly denied healthcare, my government has made it impossible for me to access vital support all to save pennies so they can build new sport stadiums.

[river3000]

guys

[navree]

Incorrect, the fact that Biden has dropped out and a candidate with history of supporting medicare for all and being more receptive to a ceasefire in the I/P conflict has made me go from "I cannot morally support the Democratic nominee" to "I am voting for the Democratic nominee despite the fact she isn't perfect in every respect." I'm really happy this played out. The Dems for the most part abandoned the old Obama platform and it feels like its possible an actual progressive agenda could come to pass in my lifetime.

Kamala 2024!

If you weren't going to vote Democratic in this election before Biden dropped out you're a dorkass loser who does not care about any of the issues you're yammering about here and also a fundamentally bad person, and I hope you get run over by a bus.

But you got one thing right in all of this gibberish, Kamala 2024.

[gingerswagfreckles]

Please tell me why braindead "leftists" are now spamming my posts about Ukraine saying that Ukraine is the reason we don't have free healthcare. Yeah lol if only we weren't wasting all our healthcare money on Ukraine. If only. We'd totally have free healthcare then. Just like we did before Russia invaded in 2022, right?

[tiredlawyer]

A DMCA take down is illegal when abused like this.

If this stands and isn’t taken to court are we allowing this company to:

* take entire control of Luigi’s likeness

* profit of off Luigi’s likeness

* control the use of his face and likeness

* are they claiming IP on the CCTV footage and images released by the NYPD? Gov owned cameras but they are claiming the right to profit off it?

* the question of ownership after this person redrew the image in her own style, it is a definitive enough step to usually invoke its own protections to the artist.

* and so much many more projections this idea could spiral off into - it’s wild

Them stepping in is insane on all counts but holy shit this is insane if not dealt with.