Pennsylvania is now covering gender transition services under Medicaid.
The state recently sent an update to providers that medically-necessary gender transition services would now be covered. That may include hormone therapy and sex reassignment surgery.
Thomas Ude, policy director at the Mazzoni Center in Philadelphia, thinks a lot of people stand to benefit from the change.
"People who are denied care many times become depressed or suicidal because they're unable to resolve differences between physical selves and their sex," he said, adding that people who are transgender are more likely to live in poverty, and therefore covered by Medicaid. "It effects many people because the exclusions that were in place prohibited not just surgery, but they also prohibited any other transition related care or treatment, including hormones, which many more people who are transgender need hormones than need surgery."
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