Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast
A new Tennessee bill poses an interstate health care nightmare. If an insurance provider covers gender-affirming care in another state—like hormone therapy in New York, or breast reduction surgery in Illinois—that provider could be cut off from the 1.7 million Tennesseans who use the state’s Medicaid program.
The bill, HB1215, is just one of several recent efforts by lawmakers that target insurance, when used for gender-affirming care. In Florida, Wyoming, Kentucky, and Arkansas, proposed legislation would hit doctors, employers, and patients, who rely on longstanding insurance programs.
“This attempt to try to limit health insurance, particularly for providers and health insurance from companies is just going to [cost] more money and delay more things in court, because we’ve known for well over a decade that health insurance has explicitly said gender-affirming care is included in health care,” Shelby Chestnut, executive director of the Transgender Law Center told The Daily Beast.