Alaska Medicaid to begin covering gender-affirming health care after class-action lawsuit

Gender-based health care will soon become a covered benefit for people in Alaska receiving Medicaid.

The change is the result of a settlement in a lawsuit against the state health department that challenged the legality of excluding transgender Alaskans from health insurance in connection with their gender transition.

Last year three Alaskans sued Alaska Health and Social Services Commissioner Adam Crum and the department on the grounds that the state’s refusal to provide transitional health care was a violation of civil rights.

In this case, an agreement was reached earlier this year. It put an end to the previous exclusions of gender health insurance – including “treatment, therapy, surgery or other procedures related to sex reassignment” and for “transsexual surgical procedures or secondary consequences” – from the state Medicaid plan. This week the state released a public notice reflecting these policy changes, due to take effect July 25th.

The 2020 lawsuit was an amended version of a lawsuit filed in 2019. At the time, Alaska was one of less than a dozen states with a Medicaid program that specifically excluded coverage for gender-based care.

The lawsuit described incidents where the three plaintiffs – Swan Being, Robin Black, and Austin Reed – sought help and were told that Alaska Medicaid would not do it.

Being is a Homer woman in her early 70s, medically diagnosed with gender dysphoria and who has been living as a woman for more than five years, according to the lawsuit.

Although her doctors recommended that she continue to seek medical treatment for her hormone levels, the lawsuit said she had received a notice from a state contractor stating, “Hormone injections and lab work are related to sex change no covered service to Alaska ”. Medicine.”

Black and Reed share similar experiences in the lawsuit: Both have been denied coverage for various surgical procedures to treat their diagnosed gender dysphoria, their attorneys wrote in the lawsuit.

Carl Charles, an attorney with Lambda Legal, was one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs alongside the Northern Justice Project, a local law firm. His team helped win a recent Alaska ruling in which a federal judge sided with a transgender state employee suing the state on a similar allegation of healthcare discrimination.

“Transgender-related health care is basic health care,” Charles said in a statement emailed Monday. “This is an important step in ensuring the health and safety of all transgender Alaskans.”

A spokesman for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.