California Catholic Daily exclusive — Seventy-one colleges and universities across the United States cover sex reassignment surgery and hormone treatment under their student health insurance. Thirteen of those universities are in California: the California Institute of Technology, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Santa Cruz.
Students are automatically enrolled in the UC Student Health Insurance Plan (UC SHIP) when they register at a UC campus. They may waive this insurance only if they are covered by another plan that meets the university’s criteria.
A credible source tells CalCatholic that UCSD once performed sex-change surgery in the 1970s and 1980s, but now does not. According to the LGBT website at UCSD, student insurance covers sex-change surgery, but apparently the surgery is not performed on campus:
“USHIP and GSHIP cover hormone therapy and cover sex reassignment surgery. However, the campus is still working our access to medical providers for these benefits,” notes the website.
According to the UC Riverside transgender site, doctors willing and able to perform the surgery are being sought: “The UCR Health Center will make referrals to an off-campus medical practitioner with expertise in transgender hormonal therapy. If the student plans to use their student health insurance to cover the hormone therapy and referral doctor care, the student should first make an appointment with a UCR Health Center physician to get a referral…. The campus is working on a list of referral doctors.”
The University of California San Francisco, however, performs some sex reassignment surgeries and hormone treatments. The processes, which can range from $7000 to $50,000 (female to male is more expensive), are covered by the UC SHIP through Anthem Blue Cross when certain criteria are met. UCSF currently performs hormone therapy, voice therapy, and chest surgery, and is working to expand its transgender surgery program.
Forcing a female body to take on the appearance of a male or a male to take on the appearance of a female requires numerous surgeries and a lifetime of hormone injections. If a student at UCSF or any of the other UC campuses must travel for surgery, UC SHIP – which costs about $1300 per semester – covers some travel expenses for up to six trips, including:
a. Round trip coach airfare to the facility which is designated by the claims administrator and approved for the transgender surgery requested, not to exceed $250 per person per trip.
b. Hotel accommodations, not to exceed $100 per day for up to 21 days per trip, limited to one room, double occupancy.
c. Other expenses, such as OTC medical supplies, not to exceed $25 per day for each person, for up to 21 days per trip. Meals are not covered.
In June 2015, Dr. Paul McHugh, who was chief psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for 26 years, wrote an article in Public Discourse, explaining his experience: “At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits.”
McHugh cites the case of Sweden:
“The most thorough follow-up of sex-reassigned people – extending over thirty years and conducted in Sweden, where the culture is strongly supportive of the transgendered — documents their lifelong mental unrest. Ten to fifteen years after surgical reassignment, the suicide rate of those who had undergone sex-reassignment surgery rose to twenty times that of comparable peers.”
[Editor’s note: One trans-friendly site said there were perhaps only a dozen or so physicians in the US who perform sex-reassignment surgery; another site linked to by the UC-Davis health center had a very short list of surgeons willing to do the deed — one was in Colorado, another in Thailand.]
All done by quack “doctors” who really should be put in jail since one cannot change ones sex. The people who do this awful thing to their bodies will die a whole lot sooner.
Here is why it’s being offered/pushed everywhere:
The Obama administration announced in May that Medicare will now cover transgender surgical procedures. (AP Reported)
Now isn’t Medicare for those 65+ usually? This administration doesn’t want students to have to wait till they are that old. They are always thinking of ways to further harm the underpinnings of family, God and country.
This is astonishing news. Why would sex-change surgery be a covered benefit for student insurance, other than for reasons of political correctness? I’m curious: UC has 10 campuses and about 238,000 students. Wonder how many of them avail themselves of this ‘benefit’ each year?
We probably won’t know the answer to your question until they release numbers, if they ever do. I am going to guess that if the estimates are correct that about 1 in 10 LGBT people are trans, then the number would be about a 0.2% of 238,000/4, assuming that all trans students transition at one point during a four year education. That number works out to about a hundred students a year. Which is probably a hundred times less than the number of students who require aggressive treatment because of aggressive bacterial infections resistant to antibiotics.
What, pray tell, do the medical issues of California students have anything to do with Catholicism? Unless you agree with me that at this point in our history, health care ought to be seen as a right, which is what Jesus taught through the parable of the Good Samaritan.
You know full well this is not about student insurance, but about sex-reassignment surgery. Surely you are aware of what Pope Francis has had to say about this. He was quoted in the liberal newspaper National Catholic Reporter as saying that gender theory “does not recognize the order of creation” and called it a sin “against God the Creator.” No ambiguity this time from the mouth of the Holy Father.
Because so-called sex-change operations are not health care but mutilation, and that affects us all, including our children and grandchildren. John Hopkins Hospital, which was the first hospital to experiment with them, no longer does them because they say they do not help the patient. Also, Catholics are being taxed for this horror.
Corrective surgery on a person who is born with ambiguous genitals is a whole different matter because it tries to make a person whole, but a so-called sex-change is a mutilation as one can never change ones DNA..
Actually, changing one’s DNA is probably going to be possible in the near future. Research CRISPR, Anne T. Many believe it’s sort of the Apple II computer of genetic engineering.
Why pretend you care about DNA, Anne? Even if changing sex at the cellular level to become biologically functional, you’d still consider it sin b/c it violates the belief that God has willed an individual’s sexual identity. Of course, you refuse to accept that various intersex conditions blow up the God Doesn’t Make Mistakes in areas of sexual identity. So is your disgust about God or do you like kicking them?
Jon J, it has nothing to do with God, but the fact that quite simply put we have some monstrous scientists.
On the other hand you are right about corrective surgery, but how much of this is factual and how much is just experimenting on people and making their lives worse. Just look at what they did to Bruce Jenner, a fully functional man who fathered children. We all know he has been airbrushed to look like he does.
Just look at what some plastic surgeons did to Michael Jackson and other Hollywood celebrities. In the end Michael Jackson’s nose was practically falling off because he had had so much surgery done on his face.
It’s hard to know. AIS (Adrenal Insensitivity Syndrome) is a condition where cells don’t respond to testosterone. Thus you have people with XY chromosomes who can only develop female secondary sexual characteristics. They also have a female sexual identity. Which shows that hormones, not chromosomes, is what creates sex identity. Some believe that transgenders occur due to cross gender sex hormone surges during gestation that affect brain development. The ability to father children wouldn’t rule out this possibility.
MRI of the brain shows some very murky evidence about transgenders. On one hand, you can’t look at a brain scan and definitively tell if someone is male or female. On the other hand, there some evidence that transgender brains show characteristics more typical of the opposite gender. Slice up the brain after death, and you’ll see particular brain structures that are more like the opposite sex. IF you have an XX brain in an XY body, is it wrong to surgically alter the body?
All that being said, there are no doubt surgeons who care nothing about their patient’s well-being, but just want to collect a big paycheck. That explains Michael Jackson and many plastic surgery victims. Bruce Jenner is a shocking case. Yet, Jenner destroys the idea that people have transgender problems because they are weak, or they are social failures. These people are difficult to understand, but it’s clear they are suffering from serious distress. Thus we need to understand people can make irrational and disturbing decisions under such circumstances.
How about we sink the research dollars into root causing the reason why there is this disconnect between brain and body. If there really is any. One doesn’t cut one’s nose off because he/she is afflicted with unremitting allergies. So why are we treating so called symptoms here without looking to identifying and alleviating the cause of this horrible affliction?
The door of discovery seems forever slammed on even speaking out about asking or thinking about “why” a certain phenomenon is occurring. If I had my nose cut off due to seasonal allergies only to move and discover that mutilation was wholly unnecessary, I’d feel grossly abused. But then perhaps it is the agenda of those in the area wherein allergies are common to…
… keep people there. It serves another purpose and me losing my nose is a nothing to them.
Something to ponder.
“…health care ought to be seen as a right, which is what Jesus taught through the parable of the Good Samaritan.”
That has got to be one of the most absurd stretches I’ve heard from you, YFC. But as always, you never fail to deliver.
Tell me. Do you headline in Vegas under a real name? I would absolutely pay to see your show ;^)
Research and find out the high percentage of transgenders who eventually commit suicide because they lose their identity.
Why would one compare transgender mutilations with bacterial infections? Obviously there must be some of those transgender mutilations that are very susceptible to bacterial infections.
Not surprised. But I’m curious if McHugh’s “comparable peer group” is simply random individuals of a similar age OR if they’re people with sexual identity problems who chose NOT to pursue transgender therapy. That would be the correct comparison if you’re interest in science rather than validating your Catholic faith which I suspect McHugh is doing.
An EXPERT from Johns Hopkins said, it (transgender) is a metal disorder.
See — https://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change
So these poor people are being taken advantage of, in the worst possible way, for profit. It is abuse of the mentally ill as these procedures will be the ‘end of them’. Better to be confused & unhappy then mutilated forever by Frankenstein doctors & end up a suicide. Bruce Jenner was mentioned. That one, very sad for him & family. Let’s hope he comes to his senses thru God’s grace.
After thought……. isn’t this all part of satan’s attack on the family?
See what you’ve done here? You’ve accepted a bunch of bare assertions with a questionable factual foundation, then used them to come to a conclusion that validates your disgust and revulsion. Then you go the extra yard to associate transgenders with Satan, which then makes it ok to abuse, ridicule humiliate them since they are agents of the evil one. To justify even more hate, you postulate they’re “attacking your family”, which makes them a threat
The problem with McHugh, is he is much more certain of his conclusions than the scientific evidence warrants (IMHO). That’s why I think his certainty is coming from his devout Catholic faith and he’s simply validating the cultural presumptions of his youth. For example, in the above article you simply accept what he says in the opening paragraphs as fact, even though the piece offers little to no evidence to support his assertion. The facts presented in the article are parsed to support his conclusion.
For example, From the Pew, McHugh cites the 20% suicide attempt rate after surgery a reason to consider it a failure. What he’s not telling you is that before treatment, 41% attempt suicide. Then he says transgender therapy provides no benefit to patients, when his own data should tell him that cutting the suicide attempt rate in 1/2 is a benefit. I agree many are moving too aggressively to treat kids who express these feelings. What he also doesn’t tell you is that transgender feelings DON’T go away if they persist into adulthood.
Jon J, come on. It cannot be healthy pumping ones body full of opposite sex hormones. If they give a person more of the hormones closer to their own biological sex, I am sure it would be less harmful but still somewhat dangerous if not monitored. Also, what doctors do not often tell people is that when one has extensive surgery, there is pain in areas that one never had discomfort before the operation, even if it is just reconstructive surgery. I know because I had reconstructive surgery after cancer by fine surgeons.
My understanding is they’ve tried to treat gender dysphoria patients with same sex hormones. The result was even more acute distress. I suspect hormones therapy isn’t good for you, especially since hormone therapy in women has been shown to promote cancer. My point was that McHugh’s reliability is pretty questionable since he parses his facts to only those that support his conclusions, and never addresses inconvenient facts for his theories.
California has tapped into a convenient method for obtaining willing subjects for scientific experimentation. Like high paid lab rats, funded by the state under the auspices of “helping” the individual.
Grotesque. Against the Hippocratic Oath. And nothing but pure Frankensteinesque barbarism marketed to the public so that the “medical professionals” won’t look like those grave diggers of old who desecrated tombs to obtain free meat to cut and observe.
Who needs guinea pigs!
Get ready folks for the cross species surgery wherein lab-grown rat heads are transplanted onto the bodies of human who just don’t feel quite up to the rigors of free will. It’s coming. Why? Because we can and when humans are given free rein to do as they will an absolute, unmitigated and horrific mess that scandalizes the soul of even the most hardened reprobate is the result.
Ann, it’s this attitude toward transgenders that makes it so hard to get funding to uncover the source of their problems. When you have a non-fatal, psych issue that people generally react to with contempt and revulsion, decision-makers will allow those attitudes to determine their judgments on whether to approve a research grant. Thus, the only people willing to finance a solution are the transgenders themselves, who want to do anything to become the opposite. sex. The result isn’t surprising.
…but giving into the desires of those who want to mutilate themselves is not the answer. Especially if said mutilation doesn’t solve the issue. It could be that the suicide stats you mentioned above are only mitigated after surgery because, having tried the extreme, the person involved now knows that the only alternative is to try and accept and live and deal with the conflict of mental emotions.
That is no testament to the success of this type of malpractice. It’s a desperation attempt that, once done, only underscores the reality that one must then work on a mental level to work through the issues that remain.
Kind of like cutting one’s nose off only to discover that the allergies and suffering remain. But now there’s…
…nothing to cut off. Now there’s no experimentation wherein doctors can gain $$$ or even the prowess of being the one who took “medicine” to its limit.
Your explanation for the drop in suicide rates is completely irrational. One would think there is more hope BEFORE treatment, b/c it at least offers hope of improvement. Even if it is the false hope you contend it to be. If they got no benefit as you, and McHugh, contend, you’d think the suicide rate would increase because there is no longer any hope of improvement. Being forced to an irrational explanation to reach your conclusion shows the weakness of your concepts
In answer to your question about why no money for researching causes of transgenderism, while lots of money for surgery is that the patients are playing for surgery themselves (elective) for the most part, while research grants usually come from the government. Transgenderism isn’t a high priority compared to heart disease, cancer, alzheimers, AIDS, ect. Transgendered individuals really suffer. Massive suicide attempt rates (41%) that are about 10x the rest of the population, but there aren’t many of them so studies just don’t get funded.
And Jon, “this attitude” as you term it could be applied to anyone with a psychological disorder or other malfunction. What seems shocking now will not be shocking fifty years from now, certainly not as science is allowed to explore where they will. Labs are already gene editing gestational pigs and inserting human DNA in them.
Try taking out the sentimentalism and look at the reality of what is going on in the scientific world. It’s no stretch to say that there will be those in future who want to be indulged in their belief that they ARE animal.
Great posts, Anne Malley. I could not agree more, and there ARE those who suffer from thinking they are werewolves, etc. That is a fact.
‘This attitude’ I’m talking about is your reflexive revulsion, disgust, and contempt. Since many people react that way to transgenders, when someone wants to study the root causes behind their problem, those studies aren’t likely to get funded. Are you saying that’s true of any psychiatric disorder? As for people who think they are an animal, there’s no credible mechanism how this can be anything other than psychological. Whereas human gametes need to code for BOTH male and female psych profiles to create both boys and girls.