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SACRAMENTO, California, January 6, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) — California’s Department of Insurance has signaled it will now require health insurance companies operating in the state to cover double mastectomies for gender dysphoric teenage girls. The government agency asserted the removal of their breasts is no longer considered “cosmetic” surgery but is instead required “reconstructive” surgery of “abnormal structures of the body caused by congenital defects.”
In other words, the healthy breasts of confused teenage girls are deemed “abnormal structures” and “congenital defects” if that girl decides she is a boy. The state of California now equates breasts on gender dysphoric young girls with other medical conditions such as cancer or trauma.
The move by the commissioner’s office was triggered by an inquiry from San Diego’s TransFamily Support Services regarding past denials of coverage for “male chest surgery for patients under 18 years old who are transitioning from female to male.”
“For far too long, individuals diagnosed with gender dysphoria have had to battle a host of challenges to get access to gender-affirming care in order to be their true selves,” said Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in a statement, responding to the transgender activist organization.
Lara blamed “[s]ocial stigma, misconceptions about gender dysphoria and its treatment, and outdated medical criteria,” which he insisted without exception are “barriers to necessary medical care that can lead to tragic results for individuals with gender dysphoria, especially for our transgender youth.”
Lara himself is openly homosexual.
At Lara’s urging, the Insurance Department’s General Counsel issued an Opinion Letter stating that “denying coverage for mastectomy and reconstruction of a male chest based solely on age is impermissible under state laws requiring coverage of reconstructive surgery.”
Brandon Showalter, a journalist who in recent years has emerged as an expert on the tragic medical mutilation of healthy young bodies enabled by the cult of transgenderism, called the procedure “breast amputation surgery.”
The change in language is an “unethical, predatory, and despicable attempt to even more viciously abuse children via gender ideology,” Maria Keffler, co-founder of the recently-formed Partners for Ethical Care, told Showalter on Monday.
“By circumventing parental consent in order to medicalize children without any minimum age restriction, the California Department of Insurance, whose very letterhead claims to ‘Protect, Prevent, and Preserve’, does exactly the opposite,” said Keffler.
“The active promotion of transgenderism has resulted in massive uncontrolled and unconsented experimentation upon children and adolescents,” Dr. Michelle Cretella, MD, FCP, president of the American College of Pediatricians told LifeSiteNews previously. “This is child abuse.”
“Transgenderism is a psychological disorder, not a biological one,” said Cretella.
“The commissioner is requiring insurance companies to pay surgeons to remove the healthy breasts of emotionally distraught girls and women and implying it is ‘necessary treatment’ — yet we already have multiple studies demonstrating that mutilation does not treat gender dysphoria,” Cretella told PJ Media’s Tyler O’Neil.
LifeSiteNews asked the California Department of Insurance if the recent move might launch a cascade of future rule changes, insisting insurance companies identify the flat chests of young male teens as abnormal “congenital defects” requiring “reconstructive surgery.”
LifeSiteNews also asked what would be the rationale of the department for limiting its requirements to “top surgery” for teens? Why not similarly require “bottom surgery,” i.e., the surgical refashioning of male genitalia into a pseudo-vagina for gender-confused boys or the inverting of female genitalia into a pseudo-penis for gender-confused girls?
Apparently, requiring insurance coverage for genital mutilation for gender-confused young people — where a penis and testicles will be identified as an “abnormal structure” on boys and a vagina on a girl will be identified as a “congential defect” — might be on the near horizon.
“The general counsel opinion letter interprets existing state law as applied to a specific set of facts in response to a public inquiry. In this instance, the department received an inquiry regarding the use of strict age minimums in insurance coverage criteria specifically for female-to-male chest surgery. Accordingly, the opinion letter was limited to the set of facts presented in the inquiry,” Madison Voss, Senior Deputy Press Secretary for the California Department of Insurance, told LifeSiteNews in an email.
“The fact that this opinion letter does not address other surgeries should not be construed as an indication that similar legal protections do not extend to other cases under current law,” explained Voss.
Voss indicated that the department would consider requiring coverage for “bottom surgeries” if they were to receive an inquiry into that topic.
“The department firmly believes in Californians’ right to access to health coverage and services, free from discrimination and consistent with the law and generally accepted standards of care,” explained Voss. “This is especially critical for members of the LGBTQ+ community, who have historically faced countless barriers to getting health insurance coverage and access to necessary medical care.”
“This is the Sexual State at work,” declared Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, author and founder of the Ruth Institute.
“The insurance companies, no doubt, would prefer not to pay for expensive, unnecessary surgery. And now the Insurance Commission, which is a relatively obscure agency of the state, is acting at the behest of activists, putting pressure on insurance companies.”
Roback Morse told LifeSiteNews that she wondered if the California Insurance Commission will apply the same amount of pressure to health insurance providers to cover surgery costs when these same patients choose to revert to their biological sex in the future.