Gender-affirming procedures such as chest surgery and genital reconfiguration would be subsidised by Medicare under a push to improve mental health and quality of life for transgender people.
The federal health department will consider an application from the Australian Society of Plastic Surgeons that seeks to establish 21 Medicare items for gender-affirming surgeries for people who have gender incongruence, in which a person’s experience of gender does not align with how they were born.
The application to the Medical Services Advisory Committee says gender-affirming surgery – a catch-all term for procedures that align a person’s body with their gender identity – is already being performed in Australia but that the system is fragmented and can have high out-of-pocket costs.
It estimated there would be 64,101 transgender people who were born male and 64,044 transgender people who were born female who could be candidates for the procedures in Australia.
Source: Health department to consider funding gender-affirming surgery under Medicare
Thanks for all your great reports.
This is appalling. What is being done to fight back against this?
Dusty
We have urged people to write to the editor and to the Health Minister expressing their concerns.