Insurance Exclusions Against Transgender Persons Should Be Eliminated

==Then it Follows Insurance Would have to Cover Every Change to a Person's Body== How is it any different if a person felt like they were supposed to be a different skin color? Should medical interventions to make a person's skin lighter or darker be provided in order to help someone feel more secure about the matching of their identity and their body. Because we live in a material universe it necessarily follows that even if scientists haven't discovered what it is that there would be psychophysiological differences in the brains of people who feel like they should have a different skin color just like you'd find for someone who wants to be a different gender. For a more realistic analogy people often feel that body weight, pimples, lack of muscles, their nose size, etc... are incongruent with their identities. These feelings of discomfort are also physical things in people's brains. Shall insurance companies be required to cover every single thing that a person wants modified to be more close to how they identify? If gender identity disorder is recognized then there is no discernible reason not to recognize all of these other identity-body mismatches as being treatable disorders as well. Many of these things may even go back to early childhood. Quite early a person may associate a certain nose size with certain personality characteristics passively through observation and then they may grow up wanting their nose to be different. Usually they adjust and realize they can still be who they are even with the nose they have. Some choose to get nose jobs. That's a fine choice but insurance shouldn't have to cover it. I'm all for people having the right to pay their own money for a sex change operation, for a nose job, or even to change their skin color. In fact I think approval should be easier. But use your own money. This is something you want not something you need. Plenty of people who want to have the body of the opposite sex live their day to day lives without surgery or hormones and function fine. They would be happier if they got an operation sure but so would many people be happier if they were to change other aspects of their bodies. ==The Effects of Language on the Brain and Neuroplasticity; And Evidence Gender Identity Can Change== Given the ubiquity of gender terms in human conversation it's not surprising that children get into the conversation both inside their heads and when talking to others. In the course of this it's no wonder a small number wind up producing sentences like "I am a boy" or "I am a girl" when it doesn't match their physical form. This does not mean they were born transgender. It is quite possible that the use of language and one's everyday identifications with various objects and concepts may shape the brain in one way or another. Language is afterall physical and so are our thoughts in response to it. All social interaction is a physical process. Hence physical differences in the brain do not prove that social interaction did not have a great deal of effect on the outcome. Children could passively pick up that "boy" and "Girl", the words are associated both with certain types of bodies and certain personality traits. They then may think that they should have a certain type of body just because they match certain personality traits. This may happen passively, subtlety just like how a child may want a certain looking nose from similar influences. Science shows that talk therapy for depression causes changes in brain chemistry. Hence language effecting the brain. http://www.nytimes.com... The brain can change. This is known as neuroplasticity. http://psychology.about.com... Also there are transsexuals who later regret having surgery. http://www.sexchangeregret.com... Even when they thought of themselves as the opposite sex since childhood later after the surgery they found it to have been a mistake and wanted to go back the way they were. Clearly this indicates that's one's gender identity can change. That it has fluidity. I am not saying you should have to change. If you have the money for it and want to transition it should be your choice. It is your body. But since you could change that's less of a reason why insurance should cover it. And I know you can't change by snapping your fingers, but neither can someone who for instance has poor body image. A fat person who hates being fat can't just suddenly make themselves feel good about being fat but they can start trying, tell themselves good things about being fat, and over time change how they feel about their body and even grow to love being fat. I know that if I woke up tomorrow and I was a woman and if it was cost prohibitive for me to transition back into being a man (and absent being filthy rich it would be, I can think of so many things that are more important to me than what gender I am) I would get used to it. I would think of ways in which having female parts was good and in time would come to enjoy being a girl. I would probably be a very butch tomboyish girl but I'd still learn to love being a girl.