Texas GOP brings bill to force health insurers to cover detransition care

A Texas bill has been introduced that would require health insurance companies that provide coverage for sex change interventions to provide coverage for all possible adverse outcomes, including those related to detransition.

State Rep. Jeff Leach (R-Plano) introduced HB 3502 following the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s 2023 Texas Policy Summit in March, during which there was a panel discussion titled Protecting Children from Radical Gender Ideology, reports The Texan.

Chloe Cole, a detransitioned young woman, was on the panel and spoke of the difficulties she is having accessing detransition-related healthcare, due to the fact that “there are no standards of care for detransitioners.”

Cole was put on puberty blockers and testosterone at age 13, had a double mastectomy at 15, and then detransitioned at 16. She is now suing the healthcare providers at Kaiser Permanente whom she alleges emotionally and physically damaged her by allowing her to consent to medical transition when she was a vulnerable teenager. She has had ongoing complications due to the removal of her healthy breasts.

Texan lawmakers have made addressing the issue of children undergoing experimental sex changes a priority this legislative session, with multiple bills currently being debated aimed at ending what one pediatric neurosurgeon recently called “an extraordinary medical atrocity.”

HB 3502 would require a health benefit plan that provides coverage for an “enrollee’s gender transition procedure or treatment” also to provide coverage for all possible adverse consequences related to such procedures, including “any short- and long-term side effects.”

The bill specifically requires that insurance coverage must be provided for “any treatment necessary to reverse the enrollee’s gender transition procedure or treatment.”

Cole, who calls herself the “canary in the coal mine," has spoken openly about the ongoing complications she has to live with as a result of the medically unnecessary bilateral mastectomy she underwent at age 15. The skin grafts continue to leak fluid years later and Cole says doctors have been unable to provide an explanation or offer any help.

Cole also experiences joint pain which she attributes to her time spent on puberty blockers.

Last month Prisha Mosley, a detransitioned young woman from Michigan, told a Texas Senate Health Committee of her ongoing health issues caused by the medical sex change interventions she underwent as a mentally ill teenager.

“My neck, back, and shoulders constantly burn and all my joints ache all the time,” she told the assembled committee. Mosley also described the permanent changes to her voice and said her endocrine system is “ruined” and she is no longer able to regulate her own hormones.

However, one of the worst side effects for Mosley is vaginal atrophy, defined as the shrinking and thinning of the vagina. She said this is so severe that she is not even able to use tampons because her vagina is so small and she is afraid she will tear, which she says has already happened.

Mosley said trusting her doctors and the transgender community led to her standing before the committee in an aching body that is no longer hers. Her severe medical issues, caused by so-called gender-affirming healthcare, are not currently covered by insurance the way her medical sex change was covered, and no doctor is willing to treat her.

“The medical professionals who did this to me have abandoned me, and the trans community has abandoned me. Doctors assisted me in mutilating myself and then left me in the cold when I wanted the harm to stop.”

HB 3502 is supported by Genspect, an international alliance calling for better care for those suffering from gender-related distress. 

"Genspect is fully supportive of this bill that would require insurance that covers medical insurance to include the cost of secondary complications related to medical transition and also to include the cost of detransition," Genspect co-founder Stella O'Malley told The Post Millennial.

"We think this is a necessary bill as it will provide comprehensive cover to anyone who seeks medical transition rather than the partial cover that is currently offered.  The insurance world needs to acknowledge that medical transition carries a heavy medical burden on the body and it is disingenuous to cover the initial process without also covering the countless complications that are typically associated with these surgeries."

The experiment of child sex changes began in the 1990s in a Dutch clinic and was unleashed upon the world before there was any evidence to demonstrate that it was safe. This is a process known as “runaway diffusion,” when the medical world mistakes a small innovative experiment as proven medical practice and a harmful treatment escapes the lab and enters mainstream practice.

In the mid-2010s, paediatric gender clinics all over the world saw a huge surge in the number of child and adolescent referrals, and a condition that was once vanishingly rare became an epidemic. This change coincided with the dawn of the modern trans right movement, and the theory of social contagion as an explanation is gaining increasing credibility.

Proponents of affirmation and medical intervention for adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria will claim that detransition is a rare event, affecting around 1 percent of those who undergo medical sex changes.

This figure is taken from older studies from the era long before the dramatic increase in teenagers seeking medical sex changes. More recent studies have shown detransition rates of 16 percent and 29 percent, and many predict these rates will continue to increase because detransition occurs on-average 8 to 10 years post-transition.

This article has been updated to include a comment from Genspect in support of the legislation.