therapy, hormones, insurance, etc.

[nikkitantillo]

I am so utterly new and clueless to this topic so please forgive me. Oh, and I do believe this is my very first post. To get to the point: Where exactly do I start? I have aetna health care, I've found a doctor who accepts my plan. Do I just make an appointment and go? Will I have to pay upfront?

Again, I apologize if these questions are extremely silly but I very rarely go to any doctor or hospital.

Thanks!

[GMCD]

In general, I don't think that most health plans accept gender issues for treatment. Like Katie said, though, there is no way to give you any useful help without knowing more about your situation.

At the very least, I would think that you can get access to good counseling and I would certainly encourage you to go for that. An LCSW isn't going to be able to help you get all of the things you need to go through any kind of a transition, but they can really help you sort out your thoughts and feelings. It's vitally important to get your head and heart sorted out when considering any kind of physical changes and counseling is a great place to start.

Some years ago, the most I got from Kaiser was access to counseling from an LCSW. A friend of mine got that and hormone treatments, but only because she was enrolled as a female (lots of paperwork for that one, including getting a lot of documents from government agencies).

I ended up getting my hormones from a shady source in Mexico. It was dangerous to do that (illegal, too), the medicines down there aren't held up to the strict standards we have in the US. Kaiser was unwilling to fill the prescriptions for estrogen for me or to take over my HRT from the guy in Mexico. That was disheartening because I was hoping to be able to do my transition under a better medical care system than just some back-alley doctor across the border giving me dodgy pills, not to mention the cost of travel, falsifying documents, paying for the pills out of pocket, and risking arrest. Later I did find a doctor in the states with a private practice who agreed to work with me, but I also had to pay him out of pocket for the treatments, and only after he conferred at length with the LCSW and a psychiatrist about my situation, verifying that I had a stable state of mind to be able to take the steps of transition which goes to show you that beginning with counseling is probably the best step, at least in my opinion.

[Lana_CD]

I recently had some blod work done for hormone levels due to trying to figure out why I have ED. BC/BS refused to pay for it saying it was relative to gender therapy. So most insurance companies won't pay for anything remotely related to gender therapy or sexual dysfunction, not even viagra or cialis.

[Karren H]

I'd say for future planning purposes you better figure the you will foot the entire bill. Insurance company companies only cover expenses to cure something.

[Angie G]

I don't think they will pay for this hun. Call you provider and ask.:hugs:
Angie

[nikkitantillo]

Thanks for all your responses. Sorry I was so vague in my post. Basically my question is whether insurance would cover any sort of therapy/counseling, and it seems my question's been answered. I guess that leaves me a bit confused as to why gender-specific therapists state which insurance they specifically accept, if in fact no insurance would cover anything.

Maybe I was really under the wrong impression but I didn't think EVERYTHING was out-of-pocket for everyone. Shows how little I know...

[nikkitantillo]

Wheee! Slow down a moment.

Do we take it you're crossdressing? Transsexual? (They're not the same thing, you know.)

What do you want in life? To change your clothes, your lifestyle or your body?

You have a doctor, fine, but have you discussed this with him/her?

Tell us more and we'll try to help.

Welcome to the forum.



To answer your questions, I've been dressing practically my entire 25 years here, I don't exactly know how I'd categorize myself (hence the seeking of therapy) but I tend to feel more of an affinity toward the term 'transgender'. Either way, I'm a bit more than a crossdresser, and perhaps (at least for now) a bit less than a transsexual. I suppose it's something I'm still actively exploring.

In terms of what I want to change, the answer would be all three.

And I do not actually have a doctor. Not since my pediatrician have I needed one, except maybe for a physical which if I recall I had done at a hospital.

Anyway, thanks again for the replies!

[Sharon]

Check your policy -- many of them while cover at least a minimum number of therapy sessions per year. Hormones are another matter, however. Most policies specifically exclude any transgender expenses. But, again, your policy may differ.