Transgender - Insurance Issues

I moved into the New York Capital District several months ago. One of my attractions to the area was the enormous amount of transgender resources available to me in this area. When I got here, to my amazement, I could find no one whom could refer me to a trans friendly primary care physician. I did find many therapists that do work with the transgendered community, however after going down the list and contacting each one of them, I found only one that took my insurance, and she wasn't accepting new patients, and most did not accept any insurance at all. I am yet to find a surgeon that performs GID related surgeries whom accepts any type of insurance coverage. Now I have one of the most popular insurance plans in the area and have the necessary coverage for most of my needs.
If you have lots of money you can buy all the medical and psychological services you need. The problem is many of us we are just struggling to survive due to loosing our jobs or unable to find suitable employment due to discrimination and psychological issues we are dealing with. This makes it almost impossible for many of us to get the services we need most, causing our lives to spiral further downwards.
It is common knowledge that the best person to help you with an issue is a person who has gone through that same issue. Most of the therapists that deal with GID (gender identity disorder) are part of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender) community and either are transgender themselves or are in close contact with the transgender community. In my eyes that kinda makes them one of us. We are in a time where we are all fighting for our very basic human rights and for a little basic respect and dignity. We all need to be working together in the fight for our basic rights and needs, but also in utilizing all that has been given us.
While we are fighting to get insurance companies to insure us, our therapists are dropping the very companies we are getting to cover us. I understand the fact that they do have their issues with the insurance companies, but as a part of our community at large I feel they could do much more to support us. Maybe we need to re-direct some of our attention towards our care providers.


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