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Pete Thomson
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American Medical Student Association
Email: pr@amsa.org
AMSA Implores HHS Office of Civil Rights to Protect Transgender Persons from Discrimination
In response to Department of Justice investigations into rolling back Section 1557 of the ACA, the American Medical Student Association stands beside the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality in protecting transgender people from discrimination.
STERLING, Virginia – August 10, 2017 – Today the American Medical Student Association issued a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights opposing roll back of section 1557 from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that prohibits discrimination in health care. This rule is pivotal to protecting our transgender communities and patients. Under the provision of this Rule, it is prohibited for insurance providers to categorically exclude transition-related care for transgender people carrying a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
A more detailed explanation of the necessity, supporting evidence, and protective benefit to this rule was compiled by the National Center for Transgender Equality in their 7/12/2017 letter to HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. They point out that approximately 0.6% of the U.S. adult population, or 1.4 million adults, identify in the transgender community. Likewise, they highlight that the collective medical and scientific community acknowledges self-identified gender as a spectrum of innate, non-pathologic human experience, including for transgender people. This is distinct from a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria, wherein some transgender people experience such clinically significant distress or impairment related to incongruence between one’s experienced gender and gender assigned at birth that it impedes typical functioning in multiple domains of life.
AMSA adamantly opposes treatment policies or rule revisions that would in any way permit exclusion and discrimination against patients based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, or that inhibit their access to equitable, affordable, quality care.
By: Daniel H. Gouger, MD, Education and Advocacy Fellow
About the American Medical Student Association:
AMSA is the oldest and largest independent association of physicians-in-training in the United States. Founded in 1950, AMSA is a student-governed, non-profit organization committed to representing the concerns of physicians-in-training. To learn more about AMSA, our strategic priorities, or joining the organization, please visit us online.
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