Vermont to allow tax payer funded transgender reassignment surgeries for children

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Vermont health insurance regulators are planning to tweak Medicaid rules so transgender youth no longer have to wait until age 21 to seek gender-affirming surgery.

The changes are aimed at removing barriers for people seeking a suite of surgeries in order to alleviate gender dysphoria, a conflict between a person's gender identity and physical gender, said Nissa James, policy director for the Department of Vermont Health Access.

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Gender-affirming surgeries covered by Medicaid include 16 types of genital surgery, as well as breast augmentation or mastectomy, a surgery that removes the whole breast.

The new rule, proposed at the end of May, eliminates an age minimum and allows youths under 18 to get surgeries with informed consent from a parent or guardian.

Nearly a quarter of all Vermonters, and 50 percent of Vermonters under the age of 18, rely on Medicaid for health insurance, according to the Department of Health.

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These surgeries are life-saving, said Dana Kaplan, executive director of Outright Vermont, an organization that supports LGBTQ youth.

Gender identity develops as young as three, he said.

"Here is an opportunity to say you can live the life that is authentically yours," he said. "Why would we get in the way of that?"

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