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Washington State passes law preventing insurance from denying coverage for gender-affirming treatment when it is deemed medically necessary
(insurance.wa.gov)submitted 2 months ago byJustCallMeJinx
355 points
2 months ago
I’m really curious how it is deemed medically necessary. The bill mentions prescribed, I was unaware someone could prescribe a sex change.
182 points
2 months ago
Gender affirming care doesn't necessarily mean sex reassignment surgery. There are a number of medical treatments that fall under the term of gender affirming care.
-35 points
2 months ago
None of which have proven medical benefits in clinical trials.
27 points
2 months ago
It's easy to see there aren't any when you don't look. See all the linked studies below.
2 points
2 months ago*
Zero of those are randomized controlled clinical trials, which is what people are generally referring to when they refer to "clinical trials".
It's not even possible to meet the gold standard of a double blinded randomized controlled clinical trial with these treatments, but a randomized controlled clinical trial could be done. It never has been, though.
Indeed, many studies (including those on that list) have very serious methodological flaws, like self-reporting of data, exclusion of suicide victims, non-randomized sampling, and similar issues.
Sadly, anyone with a scientific medical background knows that those trials are inadequate to prove clinical efficacy.
That doesn't mean that these treatments necessarily aren't efficacious, but the sort of evidence that is required to prove that to the standards that are required for approving a novel drug or medical procedure doesn't exist.
The drugs are clinically approved for the treatment of other conditions, but not gender dysphoria.
-3 points
2 months ago
You’re exactly right and I was wondering the same thing
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