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My word this is a surprise, isn’t it?

The Endocrine Society, an international organization of medical experts and biological researchers, has released a new set of guidelines for caring for transgender patients. Along with the guidelines, the organization has issued a position statement calling on federal and private insurers to cover the costs of all medical interventions a physician might prescribe for a transgender patient, including hormone replacement therapies and surgeries.

People who want to get paid insist that the people with money should pay them.

22 thoughts on “My word this is a surprise, isn’t it?”

  1. all medical interventions a physician might prescribe for a transgender patient

    A quick topical application of a cattle prod in the ‘nads, repeat as often as necessary?

  2. ” federal and private insurers to cover the costs of all medical interventions a physician might prescribe”…

    This appears to be a use of “insurance” of which I was previously unaware.

  3. BraveFard, those ‘nads’ might include some cut off, some with the innards taken out, and some turned inside out, perchance?

  4. What! You mean to say that the medical industry don’t pay for everybody’s medical treatments themselves?! Shock!

    Midwives tell us that insurers should pay out on any medical claims related to pregnancy. Physiotherapists tell us insurers should pay out on any medical claims related to sports injuries. Surgeons tell us insurers should pay out on any medical claims related to car crash injuries. This isn’t exactly unusual.

    Would you really expect the medical establishment to take the position that patients should be left to die, even if they have paid for medical insurance?

    Sheesh! You’re so transparent.

  5. As with Global Warming only the correct</i) type of research is permitted.

    A disturbing tale of our politically correct times

    The tale of James Caspian, a psychotherapist with a special interest in gender disorders, is a story for our times.

    Following a conversation with a surgeon friend who told him that in one year, he had performed two reverse gender reassignment operations on patients who had changed their minds, he decided the phenomenon warranted some research.

    So he enrolled on a Masters course at Bath Spa University, intending to write his thesis on the subject of ‘detransition’.

    A fascinating topic, you might have thought, given the sharp rise in cases of gender dysphoria.

    But no. The university referred him to its ethics committee, who rejected his topic on the grounds it was too controversial. Specifically, ‘engaging in a potentially “politically incorrect” piece of research carries a risk to the university’.

    I suppose we just have to be grateful that the Bath Spa ethics committee wasn’t around when Darwin was exploring his theory of evolution, or Galileo the solar system. Otherwise, we’d still be living in the Dark Ages.

  6. I’m reading an interesting book debunking the idea that the mediaeval church was hostile to science. Not so, apparently: you could get in trouble for heresy, but simply doing science never counted as such. In other words we are more benighted than 14th C. Catholics.

  7. “I suppose we just have to be grateful that the Bath Spa ethics committee wasn’t around when Darwin was exploring his theory of evolution, or Galileo the solar system.”

    It’s not the ethics committee that’s the problem. It’s the Twitter mob and the PR department. As I understand it, the project was initially accepted, but then they changed their mind when they realised what the SJWs would do to them. Which they probably would have done.

    Every other business pays lip service to political correctness – Bath University is far from alone in this.

  8. I’ve always felt like a penguin trapped in human form.

    I demand that my arms are amputated and replaced by flippers.

    And I want a bucket of sardines.

  9. ‘The Endocrine Society, an international organization of medical experts’

    Well, there you go. They are experts; you can’t argue with them!

  10. Wait . . . .

    ‘Along with the guidelines, the organization has issued a position statement calling on federal and private insurers to cover the costs of all medical interventions a physician might prescribe for a transgender patient’

    How would being ‘an international organization of medical experts’ give you any knowledge of insurance? By, golly, we got us an Argumentum ad Verecundiam fallacy!

    Tell the Endocrine Society to go fvck themselves! Then take a course in logic.

  11. Bloke in Costa Rica
    “I’m reading an interesting book…”
    Name names, please. What’s the book? As a chap with a degree in mediaeval history (2:1, I’ll have you know), that sounds very interesting…

  12. “I’ve always felt like a penguin trapped in human form.”

    Interesting. Do you have brain scans showing that you have bird-like brain structures?

    “How would being ‘an international organization of medical experts’ give you any knowledge of insurance?”

    You mean ‘medical insurance’.

    The issue is usually whether the treatment is “elective” or “medically necessary”; a question on which medical expertise would surely be relevant?

  13. “The issue is usually whether the treatment is “elective” or “medically necessary”; a question on which medical expertise would surely be relevant?”

    ‘the organization has issued a position statement calling on federal and private insurers to cover the costs’

    You find that medical ???

  14. I have never understood the transgendered arguement. If its a medical disorder its psychiatric and needs mental health management. Sure and insurance could cover that.

    If being transgendered is a psychiatric disorder then sex change is cosmetic and should be paid that same way as face lifts, boob jobs andctummy tucks.

  15. PaulF

    I should imagine it’s probably:
    ‘God’s Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science’, by James Hannam

  16. “You find that medical ???”

    Yes.

    Insurers generally insure for all medically necessary treatment, but not necessarily for elective treatments. The question, therefore, is which category transgender treatments fall into. If it’s medically necessary, insurers should pay. And the question of medical necessity is one for the doctors.

    This position statement is simply the doctors giving that opinion.

    “I have never understood the transgendered arguement. If its a medical disorder its psychiatric and needs mental health management. Sure and insurance could cover that.”

    The main problem is that mental health management has been tried and was found not to work. We now understand that this is because it isn’t actually a psychiatric disorder – the brain is functioning correctly, exactly as it was designed to. But they’ve got the brain modules designed for the other sex. If it was in a different body, you’d say there was nothing wrong with it.

    It’s like the difference between software and hardware faults. A psychiatric (software) fault can potentially be fixed or mitigated with appropriate input. But anatomical (hardware) faults cannot. You can’t make a girl think like a boy by talking at them. It’s not a delusion – it’s what they are.

    Now maybe in a hundred years time medical science will have got to the stage where we could actually rewire the brain, and give people a choice. But we’re not there yet.

    So the doctors are operating on the basis that mental health management doesn’t work, but sex reassignment surgery does. Obviously, you give people the treatment that works. For any other condition that didn’t have the strong social taboos around it that sex and gender do, that would be a no-brainer.

    And that leads on to the view that it’s the social taboos that are actually the problem here. They’re a set of scientifically false beliefs (i.e. delusions) that lead people to make objectively inconsistent moral judgements (i.e. you judge one way if it’s a taboo subject and the other way if it’s not). As social taboos are definitely in the “software” category (they change over the generations), they’re therefore a psychiatric issue that could probably benefit from some mental health management… Do you really want to go there? Because the SJWs very well could.

    The other argument is more philosophical. You have an organism that has some parts from one sex and other parts from the other sex. Which set are “correct” and which are the “error”? If the brain is female and the body male, why is it that the brain is judged “wrong”? Why don’t we call that a deformity of the body? A girl born with male-pattern genitals, in the same way that you can get “bearded ladies” who have male-pattern hair growth?

    Objectively, there’s no reason to regard one viewpoint as any more correct than the other. I think it’s a perceptual issue – we see other people from the outside and therefore concentrate on the visible body. But from the inside we commonly regard the brain as “me” and the body as a sort of vehicle for the brain to move around in. So when it’s oneself, we regard the brain as “right” and it’s in the wrong body. From the outside we see the body as “right” and there’s something wrong with the brain. Objective truth cannot be something that depends on where you’re looking at it from.

    I would suggest that the only proper reason for picking one viewpoint over the other is JS Mill’s dictum: “Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.” It’s up to the person living in the body to decide, not for the rest of us to impose our viewpoint on them about what they are “supposed to be”.

    It’s a principle that the medical profession take very seriously.

  17. ‘the organization has issued a position statement calling on federal and private insurers to cover the costs’

    Okay, I don’t get it. Which are the medical terms in there?

  18. @NiV, September 28, 2017 at 7:35 pm
    “…Bath University is far from alone in this.

    No, it’s Bath Spa University – a spudda type “University”.

    .
    @NiV, September 29, 2017 at 1:15 pm

    Good post, I mostly agree.

  19. “Okay, I don’t get it. Which are the medical terms in there?”

    I’ve highlighted some of them below.

    The medical consensus in the late 20th century was that transgender and gender incongruent individuals suffered a mental health disorder termed “gender identity disorder.” Gender identity was considered malleable and subject to external influences. Today, however, this attitude is no longer considered valid. Considerable scientific evidence has emerged demonstrating a durable biological element underlying gender identity.1,2 Individuals may make choices due to other factors in their lives, but there do not seem to be external forces that genuinely cause individuals to change gender identity.

    Although the specific mechanisms guiding the biological underpinnings of gender identity are not entirely understood, there is evolving consensus that being transgender is not a mental health disorder. Such evidence stems from scientific studies suggesting that: 1) attempts to change gender identity in intersex patients to match external genitalia or chromosomes are typically unsuccessful3,4; 2) identical twins (who share the exact same genetic background) are more likely to both experience transgender identity as compared to fraternal (non-identical) twins5; 3) among individuals with female chromosomes (XX), rates of male gender identity are higher for those exposed to higher levels of androgens in utero relative to those without such exposure, and male (XY)-chromosome individuals with complete androgen insensitivity syndrome typically have female gender identity6; and 4) there are associations of certain brain scan or staining patterns with gender identity rather than external genitalia or chromosomes7,8.

    The bit explaining the relationship with insurance is as follows:

    These recommendations include evidence that treatment of gender dysphoria/incongruence is medically necessary and should be covered by insurance.

    Despite increased awareness, many barriers to improving the health and well-being of transgender patients remain. Oftentimes, treatment for gender dysphoria/gender incongruence is considered elective by insurance companies, which fail to provide coverage for physician-prescribed treatment.

    https://www.endocrine.org/advocacy/priorities-and-positions/transgender-health

    Does that help?


    Pcar, Thanks!

  20. No, not at all. Insurance is between the customer and the insurance company. It has double ought nothing to do with the fvcking doctors. They know nothing of the insurance business; their comments are shit.

  21. “Insurance is between the customer and the insurance company.”

    Agreed. And the insurance company has signed a contract promising to pay for all medically necessary medical procedures. And insurance salesmen know shit about what is medically necessary, other than what the doctors tell them.

    The insurers are not legally obliged to do what the doctors say. But it’s easier for the customers to argue if they can point to all the doctors giving their expert opinions. It doesn’t look good for insurers to have to tell customers that they have a different definition of “medical necessity” to the doctors – especially if it’s obvious that it’s for non-medical, purely cultural reasons, and is killing people.

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