, Massachusetts and Connecticut passed their own measures last year. They largely bar authorities from complying with subpoenas, arrest warrants or extradition requests from states that have banned gender-affirming treatments.would expand the list of procedures covered by Medicaid, and Democratic Gov. Wes Moore has said he plans to sign it.
“They know that this is not a political stunt,” state Sen. Melanie Scheible, the bill’s sponsor and member of Nevada’s newly formed LGBTQ+ Caucus, said of the governor’s office. “I’m not trying to give them a bill to veto just so I can complain about it later.” Kevin Wang, medical director for the LGBTQI+ Program at Swedish Health Services in Seattle, said such care alleviates the depression, anxiety and self-harm seen in patients with gender dysphoria. Studies show that transgender people, particularly youth, consider and attempt suicide at higher rates than the general population.
For example, Oregon already bars insurance companies from discrimination on the basis of gender identity. And the state agency overseeing health insurance rules already requires companies to cover procedures deemed medically necessary by a doctor to treat gender dysphoria and bars them from defining them as cosmetic.
“If you’re leaving it to relatively poor transgender people to litigate a case in court … that’s not a meaningful remedy.”