Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage for Transgender Mainers

Ensuring Nondiscriminatory Comprehensive Healthcare Coverage for Transgender Mainers

Summary       

Maine People’s Alliance believes that healthcare is a human right for all Mainers.  Currently transgender Mainers experience discrimination and limited access to healthcare.  MPA supports nondiscriminatory, comprehensive healthcare coverage, including increased enforcement of existing legislation and creation of new legislation to ensure that all Mainers, including transgender Mainers, receive full coverage for all of their health needs.

Context          

Transgender is a broad term for people who do not identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.  Being transgender is different for every person, but many choose to transition from their assigned gender to the one that feels true to them, which can be male, female, or a different gender.  Transition can include but is not limited to, dressing differently, changing ones gender pronouns and/or name, taking hormones, and/or having surgery.

Transgender people are diverse and live the full range of lifestyles of all people in our communities.  Transgender people are integral parts of our cultural, social, spiritual and political life in Maine and face the typical joys and struggles of all Mainers.  However, a recent survey showed that 41 percent of transgender people in the US report attempting suicide as compared with 4.6 percent of the overall US population.^[1] Underlying this statistic are the particular forms of social, economic and political exclusion, harassment, and outright discrimination and violence that transgender people experience, especially transgender people of color and all low income transgender people.  Creating a fully inclusive Maine will require addressing the barriers to psychological and physical health and safety, access to educational and economic opportunities, and political participation that transgender people face.

Healthcare     

Ensuring full access to healthcare is an important, and possible, first step.  Transgender people face discrimination when receiving all forms of medical care.^[2]  Many doctors are ignorant of the physical and psychological health needs of transgender people.  Insurance companies discriminate against transgender Mainers, limiting their access to necessary, lifesaving, care even though there is no medical or financial basis for these exclusions.^[3]  MPA supports enacting nondiscriminatory, comprehensive healthcare coverage to ensure all Mainers receive the lifesaving care they need.