Students Pay Higher Health Care Costs to Cover Sex Change Operations

08 Mar, 2014 by Dustin Siggins

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For young people, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is an unmitigated disaster. Higher costs, worse care…the nightmare goes on.

Now it looks like students at one college will pay a few dollars extra per year to cover sex change operations:

University of Illinois trustees today approved a student health insurance plan for the Urbana-Champaign campus that will for the first time cover gender reassignment surgery, a benefit they approved for the Chicago campus last year.

The trustees’ 8-2 decision came after about 20 minutes of discussion and followed public comments by two students and an employee who counsels the university’s transgender students.

Trustee Dr. Timothy Koritz and student trustee Michael Cunningham voted against it.

The insurance cost for students will increase about 15 percent this fall, to $582 a year for undergraduates and $752 for graduate students. Between $4 and $6 of the increase is attributed to adding gender reassignment surgery to the insurance plan. The procedure, commonly referred to as a “sex change,” transforms a person’s physical appearance and sexual characteristics to that of the other sex.

The insurance will cover counseling, hormone therapy and surgery related to gender reassignment.

Back in December, I reported that the Obama administration appeared to be looking at changing a 1981 law that prevented exactly this kind of spending in federal programs. It looks like these trustees have taken the decision out of the administration’s hands.

Anyone who is considering a sex change operation deserves compassion and care, not derision or dismissal. However, requiring students to cover costs for such an operation and its related costs is no solution, especially if any students have religious objections to such an operation.

And speaking of religion, this is yet another example of government bureaucrats foolishly thinking they can change what God made. Which is definitely no way to help anyone considering the unwise option of a sex change operation.