Sara Heath
The physician practice for transgender people is still being harmed by subpar medical care from professionals and insurance rejections from their medical payers, according to the US Transgender Survey from the National Center for Transgender Equality, as of February 9, 2024.
Although the survey was conducted in 2022, NCTE released its findings earlier this week, stating that transgender people frequently experience unfavorable medical experiences despite higher calm happiness following receiving gender-affirming care. These unfavorable experiences can range from subpar medical care from medical professionals to care users’ protestations of coverage.
According to the roughly 100,000 participant pool, trans patients reported good general health overall. A third of patients said their health was excellent, 24 percent said it was very good, and 6 percent reported having excellent health. 9 percent of respondents said their health was poor, while 25% said it was fair.
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Notably, 44 percent of respondents reported having experienced severe emotional problems within the past 30 days, and NCTE assessed using the Kessler 6 Psychological Distress Scale. Although the document did not go into the reasons behind this figure, this could be evidence of a decline in trans people’s access to mental health.
However, the report indicated that transgender person communities in care are in some ways failing. Nearly eight out of ten respondents (79 percent) said they had visited a medical provider at least once in the previous 12 months, but 28 percent also acknowledged skipping necessary care for fear that their services might mistreat them.
Based on additional responses, that concern about mistreatment isn’t entirely unfounded.
48 percent of people who had seen a medical service in the previous 12 months claimed to have had at least one unfavorable practice because they are transgender. Bad experiences included being denied medical, being mistreated, having a provider treat them harshly or abusively, or having the provider physically or verbally abuse them.
Similar issues arose in patients’ interactions with healthcare users.
26 percent of respondents said they’ve had issues with their health plan, despite the fact that 87 percent have health coverage. Being denied insurance for hormone treatments, surgery, or another type of medical related to their gender identity/transition, gender-specific care because they are transgender, as well as regular healthcare, were some of the issues.
Patients report positive quality of life results from some forms of gender-affirming attention, despite these weak healthcare experiences and denials in medical coverage. For instance, 79 percent of respondents said they were much happier with their lives now that they had switched genders. 88 percent were much more happy after gender-affirming surgery, and another 84 percent felt much better after receiving hormone therapy.
Access to gender-affirming attention as well as standard medical for transgender people are at the forefront of national discussion as a result of these findings. KFF discovered earlier this month that 38 percent of transgender youth globally are affected by laws restricting or forbidding entry to gender-affirming attention.
According to a different KFF statement, patients who identify as transgender frequently have difficulty getting care. Common issues like the high cost of medical care are access obstacles, but there are more specialized issues, like finding a provider who is knowledgeable about transgender care.
