Health Care Morass

An issue recently brought before a city-sponsored diversity task force in Fort Worth, Texas was whether health care insurance provided by the city to its employees should include coverage for sex-change operations. The city of Fort Worth is currently under siege by gay rights advocates and others for a controversial raid made by police on a gay bar. That raid was later deemed improper. An internal investigation of the raid is currently underway. According to the article printed in this morning's Dallas Morning News, the issue of extending insurance provided to city employees to cover sex changes put forward by a diversity task force was "greeted warmly" by the city.

The issue at hand is one that bodes ominous for national health care. The line between necessary health care and procedures, and desired health care and procedures, is one that should be crossed with great apprehension, if at all. There are a wide vary of procedures available to those unhappy with their appearance and condition. Breast lifts, tummy tucks, face lifts, hair implants, nose jobs, and numerous other procedures are available to those dissatisfied with themselves and their appearance. Increasingly, such procedures are not viewed as motivated by vanity, but rather necessary to self esteem, and, by extension, psychological well being. Yet, despite the angst and psychological discomfort such conditions may cause, they are very rarely medical conditions that pose a threat to health or require medical treatment. As far as I know, no one has ever died, or needed to be hospitalized, because they were unable to afford getting a sex change operation, let alone a face lift.

For some time, medicine has striven to keep up with the demands made by those with low self-esteem, anomie, and out sized egos. The demand for the psychological comfort and ease that medical and cosmetic alterations and improvements can provide is unlikely to wane in the future. Apart from the costs to any public health care plan that such procedures pose, there is also the matter of using taxpayer money to assuage and accommodate the egos and insecurities of the vain and self conscious through funding those procedures. I suspect many taxpayers would be uncomfortable with the idea that their money was being used to fund sex change operations. But then again, few seem very interested in what taxpayers think anymore.

Feeling that one is somehow living in the wrong body and that they have the wrong genitalia is not a medical condition. It is a psychological condition.