> Given that England has already made private-pay care of children and youth illegal, the state of trans related medicine in the UK is rapidly resembling that of the state of Missouri, likely the worst state in the US for trans people seeking care.
Missouri is the worst state for Trans care? I thought it was Florida (as per Erin Reed's map)! Please explain why.
First the usual one; NHS England covers England, not the UK. We have several NHS's.
Secondly; this doesn't make England equivalent to Missouri, it makes it equivalent to every state in the US with free at point of use healthcare. If you can pay for treatment, you can get treatment, the same as the best states in the US.
Lastly; pre-Brexit, where in the EU could trans people go to get free treatment?
I live in NYC in New York State and I have medicaid (which is single-payer for poor and disabled, but varies from state to state; NY state's medicaid is robust) pay for my trans care (I qualify because I'm on the autistic spectrum).
Well, of course they are, because the mere fact of being "specialists with experience" makes them suspect to Tories who think there's no such thing as transgenderism. And it's not like modern conservatives are fond of facts and knowledge in the first place.
"This parallels the appointment of Cass, who worked as a pediatrician, but specialized in developmental neurodisability, including abnormal fetal development of the spine but not anything related to trans medicine."
hiring someone with no relevant qualifications but with the ability to put a cart before a horse is so very convenient, isn't it?
Take cataract surgery if you go private you can get lens that are for long and short distances. NHS lenses are either long or short and its mostly long.
There was outrage because it was limiting Viagra to men. Certain drugs that are too high a price for various conditions aren't available.
You can't get things that are considered cosmetic done on the NHS. So no plastic surgery.
NHS dentists don't do tooth implants.
Trans care shouldn't be limited and especially as they make exceptions for if it has an impact on mental health with plastic surgery etc.
This situation is so nonsensical and heartbreaking and flat out cruel. I can tell that in the US, mistreatment of Trans people is to some extent due to misdirection, as conservatives would like to distract voters from their other disastrous policies with a healthy dollop of needing someone to Other. But what exactly is the reason for it in the UK? Because it’s just…this all seems to simple: we call people what they ask to be called, we treat people how they ask to be treated, we trust people to know themselves. Is it a long con with the NHS, like “be careful what you wish for, if taxpayers pay for everyone’s healthcare, taxpayers get to decide what healthcare you get” as part of their work to wreck the NHS? Do they actually believe the things they’re saying or the goals they have for trans kids to maybe secretly be cis?
I’m sorry, it’s just such an awful situation, and there’s so little we can do besides gaze in horror and speak out. Are there funds that will help British trans kids and adults travel for health care?
IMO it goes to the Patriarchy and Men's primal fear with being attracted and discovering the object of their desire has a dick. There is far less flashback at people transitioning to male! Look at Cher's son...mo one gave two shits....It all comes down to men's fears...fuck this shit.
Authoritarians want everyone to stay in their place, especially women. If you can change, that means there’s nothing intrinsically superior about being male. So it starts with trans kids and ends with the Handmaid’s Tale. JK Rowling is the public face and big money, but behind her are people who have no problem with actual Nazis showing up at their rallies, which makes them also Nazis no matter what they say.
The NHS is obviously different than M4A would be in the US, but it's definitely a thing that makes me worry should we ever get to single payer here. My company covers trans medical care currently. If we went to national single payer my care would be subject to the whims of Congress or, in our post-Chevron world, Samuel Alito.
They are already subject to the whims of congress, given that states have banned trans health care and there's no particular barrier to the federal government, which already heavily regulates health care, from also choosing to ban such care.
I'm not saying you're wrong to worry. I'm just saying that private pay or single payer or all the weird bullshit we currently have in between, they're still going to fuck with our health care.
They can, so they will. Single payer doesn't have anything to do with it.
Fair enough. I had to pay my own freight the whole way and have the diminished lifetime savings to go with it and I know I'm lucky to have had the chance to make enough to pay said freight in the first place,so I'll admit I'm not quite as up on the current situation as perhaps I should be. As a self-insured company I'm actually not familiar with how my employer's coverage works in Florida. Certainly the access to care is lacking.
It could. Under this system States can have private institutions at least that can focus on transitioning. It may be expensive, but such facilities exist. What the UK is showing us is that this is not a given under a nationalized system. Of course I still support M4A or another plan, but it can be abused!
Of course states CAN have private institutions that provide trans care. But since states can also ban such private institutions (as they have already done many times -- 26 at last count), the point is that whether the care is available or not is still within the power of legislatures to decide with or without M4A.
The danger of M4A isn't that regressive can't ban trans health in private settings but can under M4A. The danger is that under M4A the ban can be accomplished more stealthily by appointing administrators who will make the changes via policy implementation rather than via a law where legislators have to record their votes.
Accountability for such bans becomes more diffuse and indirect, which can be a problem, but the ability to implement those bans is not absent now. Twenty six states ban trans health care in whole or in part.
TWENTY SIX STATES.
The conversation of M4A and trans health care drives me batty because while it's possible to deny care indirectly under M4A through appointments of administrators that you know are trans-hostile but don't have a long record of demonizing trans people, you can also deny care indirectly through making it economically inaccessible and deny it directly through banning it in red states, and between those two strategies coverage and thus care is already denied to far more than 50% of the country.
Yes, there are risks for trans people under M4A. And I will happily fight for access within an M4A system should it ever be implemented. I will not be complacent.
But the current system isn't working for trans people as a whole. It's just working for some trans individuals. Citing the scary possibilities of M4A without mentioning how the current system hurts trans communities is effectively a defense of the indefensible status quo.
At the point that Democrats have voting power to pass single payer healthcare they should also first [gut the Conservative Supreme Court and] pass a new ERA that protects the full spectrum of people.
Having a smart outsider review the evidence sounds good at first, but makes no sense. Who should determine if a drug works? People who no nothing about the disease in question? Who should decide if a car is properly designed. People who have some mechanical knowledge but never designed a car? It makes no sense.
Everyone involved in writing the Cass report should be deeply ashamed. The misuse of science is what makes it so easy for anti-science ideology to take hold.
I hired a guy a couple weekends ago to help clear some brush piles off my property. This is a real, true account, I’m not making this up, just paraphrasing a bit for brevity. We were getting along together. As we were offloading stumps at the dump, he asked me “Are you a liberal?” I said yes. “Funny you don’t act too much like a liberal.” We kept talking and guess where the conversation went?
Him:”I used to be more on the side of the democrats about the gays, I was for gay marriage, but then they took it too far. It’s just too far”
Me: “Well what’s so bad about it that’s hurt anyone”
Him: “Trans .”
Me: “And what’s bad about that?”
Him: “Kids being transitioned is bad for them. [Whatever I’m reading told me so]”
Me: “The real statistics are suicide rates are lower among trans youth who are allowed medical care vs those who are not. The doctors of people seeking trans care are way more informed about this than we are and it’s none of our business and harms no one.”
Him: “Primal instincts? You do have them? Does not your inner caveman light up at the thought of a trans woman using the women’s bathroom?”
Me: “No. They’ve made a difficult choice and face incredible levels of prejudice and no one’s doing it to be a perv in the bathroom. If there were I’m sure we would have heard of it by now.”
Him: “the female sports”
Me: “Again, are there even enough competitive female trans athletes out there to make a statistical dent? They are women if they are competing as women.”
It was a long car ride, I’ve abbreviated him quite a bit. He then started talking about. states having more rights and look how good that’s going with abortion and then I said yeah look how it’s showing us exactly how bad it is when women can’t get access to necessary healthcare. At least that’s not happening at the federal level and maybe we can make a national right to abortion and bodily autonomy. He then started talking about balkanization.
I had a plumber try that tack with me. He already knew I taught at the university (I typically withhold that information in my tiny, rural, deep-red town because the town/gown divide is pretty ugly) and asked what subject I teach, and when I said psychology, demanded I agree with him that trans people are mentally ill or predators. I actually teach specifically about gender and sexuality, and as a social psychologist, I also teach a lot about prejudice and socialization, so I tried to counter with some basics on how gender is understood in mainstream science. He kept speaking over me to talk about gods creation and make wild claims about trans boogeymen that are proof everything I was saying was indoctrination. It was deeply unpleasant. He’d already cemented my intention to not call him back for any future work by being bizarrely unprofessional in other ways, but I actually started to get a little spooked at his irrational fervor because he obviously knew I lived alone. Even if his plumbing repair had lasted more than a single stupid day and he’d been at all gracious about my calling to ask what he could do to rectify the hundreds of dollars I’d paid him to not actually fix the problem, I’d be happy to never interact with him again. But this is a young guy (30s?) who knows all he needs to know about exactly how the world works according to his religion and politics, and he can’t even process any contradicting information. I’m surrounded by guys like him out here, mad at the world for not giving him the life he thinks he deserves and only getting more entrenched. It’s exhausting.
I tried several angles to get him to the basic premise that gender is a social construct, but he wasn’t having it. He did say that some exceptions and freak mutations don’t invalidate the rule of sex and gender being binary and determined “biologically” by god from birth. He couldn’t even accept that other cultures, both contemporary and historical, have understood gender differently than how we do in the US. Nobody else counts, because again, biological and god-given. I gave up.
The inhumanity of this attitude from a discipline that's supposed to be dedicated to relieving pain and suffering and "...do no harm" is unconscionable.
Rage and overwhelming frustration and resentment consume me and I'm just a Yank thousands of miles away.
I've had a similar thought several times recently. It revolves around creating a center for trans related health care in some semi-rural but still liberal part of Britain.
Imagine college towns of the US somewhere in the UK. I'm sure that's a thing, even if I don't know the UK well enough to know where. (Oxfordshire, maybe?). Now close all the trans health care offices outside that small area. Then make people ineligible to join the waitlist if they don't live directly in that small area. Then make people go to the back of the waitlist if they access any NHS services outside of that small area, even if it's for something completely different unrelated to trans health. Maybe you have a weird cardio health thing and the nearest specialist is in London. Too bad. Prevent a heart attack and lose access to trans health care.
Combine this with the reforms of the Gender Recognition Act, and you could have people who can't change their ID unless they live in that specific area of Britain. And revoke the changes if they move out of the area or if they accept any health care outside of that area.
They aren't creating concentration camps. They're just efficiently concentrating relevant services while also addressing concerns for those in other parts of the country who want to exclude trans kids from sports and fire them from their businesses.
This is what I imagine as the modern, democratic "Final Solution" to despised minorities.
> Given that England has already made private-pay care of children and youth illegal, the state of trans related medicine in the UK is rapidly resembling that of the state of Missouri, likely the worst state in the US for trans people seeking care.
Missouri is the worst state for Trans care? I thought it was Florida (as per Erin Reed's map)! Please explain why.
Three points;
First the usual one; NHS England covers England, not the UK. We have several NHS's.
Secondly; this doesn't make England equivalent to Missouri, it makes it equivalent to every state in the US with free at point of use healthcare. If you can pay for treatment, you can get treatment, the same as the best states in the US.
Lastly; pre-Brexit, where in the EU could trans people go to get free treatment?
I live in NYC in New York State and I have medicaid (which is single-payer for poor and disabled, but varies from state to state; NY state's medicaid is robust) pay for my trans care (I qualify because I'm on the autistic spectrum).
𝘖𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘨𝘢𝘪𝘯 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘵𝘩 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘹𝘤𝘭𝘶𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘯𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸.
Well, of course they are, because the mere fact of being "specialists with experience" makes them suspect to Tories who think there's no such thing as transgenderism. And it's not like modern conservatives are fond of facts and knowledge in the first place.
"This parallels the appointment of Cass, who worked as a pediatrician, but specialized in developmental neurodisability, including abnormal fetal development of the spine but not anything related to trans medicine."
hiring someone with no relevant qualifications but with the ability to put a cart before a horse is so very convenient, isn't it?
Brexit was touted as having made an extra 380 million euros available to the NHS. What happened to it?
£22 billion spending hole in the finances that's what happened to it.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-public-finances-show-22-billion-pound-spending-hole-new-finance-minister-2024-07-29/
You mean...they LIED??
I KNOW.. it's never been heard of before has it! Not like any tory has ever lied in their lives.
"Cass Review"
"Siri, what is a euphemism?"
I hate all of this. especially the bit where this was completely predictable. fuck.
We are seeing the problem with the political nature of a National Health System...it can be used to deny care.
That's the way its always been.
Take cataract surgery if you go private you can get lens that are for long and short distances. NHS lenses are either long or short and its mostly long.
There was outrage because it was limiting Viagra to men. Certain drugs that are too high a price for various conditions aren't available.
You can't get things that are considered cosmetic done on the NHS. So no plastic surgery.
NHS dentists don't do tooth implants.
Trans care shouldn't be limited and especially as they make exceptions for if it has an impact on mental health with plastic surgery etc.
This situation is so nonsensical and heartbreaking and flat out cruel. I can tell that in the US, mistreatment of Trans people is to some extent due to misdirection, as conservatives would like to distract voters from their other disastrous policies with a healthy dollop of needing someone to Other. But what exactly is the reason for it in the UK? Because it’s just…this all seems to simple: we call people what they ask to be called, we treat people how they ask to be treated, we trust people to know themselves. Is it a long con with the NHS, like “be careful what you wish for, if taxpayers pay for everyone’s healthcare, taxpayers get to decide what healthcare you get” as part of their work to wreck the NHS? Do they actually believe the things they’re saying or the goals they have for trans kids to maybe secretly be cis?
I’m sorry, it’s just such an awful situation, and there’s so little we can do besides gaze in horror and speak out. Are there funds that will help British trans kids and adults travel for health care?
IMO it goes to the Patriarchy and Men's primal fear with being attracted and discovering the object of their desire has a dick. There is far less flashback at people transitioning to male! Look at Cher's son...mo one gave two shits....It all comes down to men's fears...fuck this shit.
Authoritarians want everyone to stay in their place, especially women. If you can change, that means there’s nothing intrinsically superior about being male. So it starts with trans kids and ends with the Handmaid’s Tale. JK Rowling is the public face and big money, but behind her are people who have no problem with actual Nazis showing up at their rallies, which makes them also Nazis no matter what they say.
The NHS is obviously different than M4A would be in the US, but it's definitely a thing that makes me worry should we ever get to single payer here. My company covers trans medical care currently. If we went to national single payer my care would be subject to the whims of Congress or, in our post-Chevron world, Samuel Alito.
GMTA
They are already subject to the whims of congress, given that states have banned trans health care and there's no particular barrier to the federal government, which already heavily regulates health care, from also choosing to ban such care.
I'm not saying you're wrong to worry. I'm just saying that private pay or single payer or all the weird bullshit we currently have in between, they're still going to fuck with our health care.
They can, so they will. Single payer doesn't have anything to do with it.
Fair enough. I had to pay my own freight the whole way and have the diminished lifetime savings to go with it and I know I'm lucky to have had the chance to make enough to pay said freight in the first place,so I'll admit I'm not quite as up on the current situation as perhaps I should be. As a self-insured company I'm actually not familiar with how my employer's coverage works in Florida. Certainly the access to care is lacking.
It could. Under this system States can have private institutions at least that can focus on transitioning. It may be expensive, but such facilities exist. What the UK is showing us is that this is not a given under a nationalized system. Of course I still support M4A or another plan, but it can be abused!
Of course states CAN have private institutions that provide trans care. But since states can also ban such private institutions (as they have already done many times -- 26 at last count), the point is that whether the care is available or not is still within the power of legislatures to decide with or without M4A.
The danger of M4A isn't that regressive can't ban trans health in private settings but can under M4A. The danger is that under M4A the ban can be accomplished more stealthily by appointing administrators who will make the changes via policy implementation rather than via a law where legislators have to record their votes.
Accountability for such bans becomes more diffuse and indirect, which can be a problem, but the ability to implement those bans is not absent now. Twenty six states ban trans health care in whole or in part.
TWENTY SIX STATES.
The conversation of M4A and trans health care drives me batty because while it's possible to deny care indirectly under M4A through appointments of administrators that you know are trans-hostile but don't have a long record of demonizing trans people, you can also deny care indirectly through making it economically inaccessible and deny it directly through banning it in red states, and between those two strategies coverage and thus care is already denied to far more than 50% of the country.
Yes, there are risks for trans people under M4A. And I will happily fight for access within an M4A system should it ever be implemented. I will not be complacent.
But the current system isn't working for trans people as a whole. It's just working for some trans individuals. Citing the scary possibilities of M4A without mentioning how the current system hurts trans communities is effectively a defense of the indefensible status quo.
I think we actually agree so....thank you!
At the point that Democrats have voting power to pass single payer healthcare they should also first [gut the Conservative Supreme Court and] pass a new ERA that protects the full spectrum of people.
this is one reason medicare4all is almost certainly a bad idea.
gop & mushy dems like liebermann (rest in powerlessness), manchin, & sinema having veto power over care plans is a dealbreaker.
How has private insurance helped trans people in Missouri and Texas and Florida?
Having a smart outsider review the evidence sounds good at first, but makes no sense. Who should determine if a drug works? People who no nothing about the disease in question? Who should decide if a car is properly designed. People who have some mechanical knowledge but never designed a car? It makes no sense.
Consider that here, since Chevron , the lamest Con Federal Judge will "decide" this...?
How do you like me so far. sez Asslito....
Clearly I should be entrusted with tens of millions of dollars to review the effectiveness of GOP messaging.
You've got my vote if I can be on your "Coms" team...
Everyone involved in writing the Cass report should be deeply ashamed. The misuse of science is what makes it so easy for anti-science ideology to take hold.
I hired a guy a couple weekends ago to help clear some brush piles off my property. This is a real, true account, I’m not making this up, just paraphrasing a bit for brevity. We were getting along together. As we were offloading stumps at the dump, he asked me “Are you a liberal?” I said yes. “Funny you don’t act too much like a liberal.” We kept talking and guess where the conversation went?
Him:”I used to be more on the side of the democrats about the gays, I was for gay marriage, but then they took it too far. It’s just too far”
Me: “Well what’s so bad about it that’s hurt anyone”
Him: “Trans .”
Me: “And what’s bad about that?”
Him: “Kids being transitioned is bad for them. [Whatever I’m reading told me so]”
Me: “The real statistics are suicide rates are lower among trans youth who are allowed medical care vs those who are not. The doctors of people seeking trans care are way more informed about this than we are and it’s none of our business and harms no one.”
Him: “Primal instincts? You do have them? Does not your inner caveman light up at the thought of a trans woman using the women’s bathroom?”
Me: “No. They’ve made a difficult choice and face incredible levels of prejudice and no one’s doing it to be a perv in the bathroom. If there were I’m sure we would have heard of it by now.”
Him: “the female sports”
Me: “Again, are there even enough competitive female trans athletes out there to make a statistical dent? They are women if they are competing as women.”
It was a long car ride, I’ve abbreviated him quite a bit. He then started talking about. states having more rights and look how good that’s going with abortion and then I said yeah look how it’s showing us exactly how bad it is when women can’t get access to necessary healthcare. At least that’s not happening at the federal level and maybe we can make a national right to abortion and bodily autonomy. He then started talking about balkanization.
Sigh...it always comes to succession....
I had a plumber try that tack with me. He already knew I taught at the university (I typically withhold that information in my tiny, rural, deep-red town because the town/gown divide is pretty ugly) and asked what subject I teach, and when I said psychology, demanded I agree with him that trans people are mentally ill or predators. I actually teach specifically about gender and sexuality, and as a social psychologist, I also teach a lot about prejudice and socialization, so I tried to counter with some basics on how gender is understood in mainstream science. He kept speaking over me to talk about gods creation and make wild claims about trans boogeymen that are proof everything I was saying was indoctrination. It was deeply unpleasant. He’d already cemented my intention to not call him back for any future work by being bizarrely unprofessional in other ways, but I actually started to get a little spooked at his irrational fervor because he obviously knew I lived alone. Even if his plumbing repair had lasted more than a single stupid day and he’d been at all gracious about my calling to ask what he could do to rectify the hundreds of dollars I’d paid him to not actually fix the problem, I’d be happy to never interact with him again. But this is a young guy (30s?) who knows all he needs to know about exactly how the world works according to his religion and politics, and he can’t even process any contradicting information. I’m surrounded by guys like him out here, mad at the world for not giving him the life he thinks he deserves and only getting more entrenched. It’s exhausting.
I have a question for him. Well, two questions.
1. Does he believe that birth certificates are the last word on what gender someone is forever and ever?
2. Does the existence of Caster Semenya and other women like her affect his answer to the first question?
I tried several angles to get him to the basic premise that gender is a social construct, but he wasn’t having it. He did say that some exceptions and freak mutations don’t invalidate the rule of sex and gender being binary and determined “biologically” by god from birth. He couldn’t even accept that other cultures, both contemporary and historical, have understood gender differently than how we do in the US. Nobody else counts, because again, biological and god-given. I gave up.
Wow, that sounds like a loooong-ass day...
Dammit, I burned my hash browns talking with y'all in the comments about this NHS shit.
Sigh.
MMMMMMmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm I love super crispy! Fax them to me please and I will send smokey hot sauce!
Dang! hate when that happens. Hope you have replacements.
The inhumanity of this attitude from a discipline that's supposed to be dedicated to relieving pain and suffering and "...do no harm" is unconscionable.
Rage and overwhelming frustration and resentment consume me and I'm just a Yank thousands of miles away.
Some days I honestly wonder what would happen if some MP proposed a bill to implement, as it were, a "final solution" to the "trans question."
It'd have to pass both the house of commons and the house of lords, neither of which is a given. People would still try to stop it via the courts.
I've had a similar thought several times recently. It revolves around creating a center for trans related health care in some semi-rural but still liberal part of Britain.
Imagine college towns of the US somewhere in the UK. I'm sure that's a thing, even if I don't know the UK well enough to know where. (Oxfordshire, maybe?). Now close all the trans health care offices outside that small area. Then make people ineligible to join the waitlist if they don't live directly in that small area. Then make people go to the back of the waitlist if they access any NHS services outside of that small area, even if it's for something completely different unrelated to trans health. Maybe you have a weird cardio health thing and the nearest specialist is in London. Too bad. Prevent a heart attack and lose access to trans health care.
Combine this with the reforms of the Gender Recognition Act, and you could have people who can't change their ID unless they live in that specific area of Britain. And revoke the changes if they move out of the area or if they accept any health care outside of that area.
They aren't creating concentration camps. They're just efficiently concentrating relevant services while also addressing concerns for those in other parts of the country who want to exclude trans kids from sports and fire them from their businesses.
This is what I imagine as the modern, democratic "Final Solution" to despised minorities.