In January the Florida Select Committee on Health Innovation approved House Bill 1639 (HB 1639), which dramatically restricts treatment for transgender individuals. If the bill becomes law, it will make it easier for insurers to refuse to cover gender-affirming care, will require those that cover gender transition to also offer policies that do not and will bar transgender people from updating their driver’s license. It also mandates that insurers provide detransition care to those who want to revert to the sex they were assigned at birth.
In intent, HB 1639 is similar to hundreds of other recent Republican-led bills advancing through state legislatures, including nine heard in one day in Missouri’s legislature and GOP lawmakers’ override of Governor Mike DeWine’s veto of a similar bill in Ohio. They aim to create a climate of panic around young LGBTQ people’s access to health care and participation in sports that can be exploited for partisan ends. The “endgame,” as Michigan and Ohio legislators admitted during a recent X Space (formerly known as a Twitter Space), is banning gender-affirming care “for everyone,” including adults.
The Florida bill would require insurers to cover “mental health or therapeutic services to treat a person’s perception that his or her sex … is inconsistent with such person’s sex at birth by affirming the insured’s sex.” In plain language, HB 1639 endorses so-called conversion therapy: counseling aimed at curing someone of being transgender, viewing it as a form of mental disorder or spiritual failing.
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Going even further, five West Virginia state senate Republicans proposed Senate Bill 194, essentially a total ban on gender-affirming care for…
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