{"id":672,"date":"2016-02-02T21:17:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-02T21:17:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/?p=672"},"modified":"2016-02-02T21:17:30","modified_gmt":"2016-02-02T21:17:30","slug":"foia-to-hhs-complaints-for-denial-of-coverage-for-transition-related-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/?p=672","title":{"rendered":"FOIA to HHS &#8211; Complaints for Denial of Coverage for Transition-Related Care"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)\u00a0finalizes its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.federalregister.gov\/articles\/2015\/09\/08\/2015-22043\/nondiscrimination-in-health-programs-and-activities\">proposed rule prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity in covered health programs<\/a>, the question remains: what has HHS been doing since March 2010 to enforce the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/42\/18116\">statute which prohibited such discrimination, 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 18116<\/a>? \u00a0To that end, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2016-02-02-FOIA-to-HHS-re-Transition-Related-Care-Complaints.pdf\">I have FOIAed the following documents from HHS<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div class=\"page\" title=\"Page 1\">\n<div class=\"layoutArea\">\n<div class=\"column\">\n<ul>\n<li>Any and all documents since March 23, 2010 establishing a complaint against a health insurance carrier for discrimination on the basis of gender identity, specifically by denying coverage for transition-related care such as mental health treatment, hormone replacement therapy, or gender affirming surgeries such as genital reconstructive surgery.<\/li>\n<li>Any and all documents since March 23, 2010 closing a complaint against a health insurance carrier for discrimination on the basis of gender identity, specifically by denying coverage for transition-related care such as mental health treatment, hormone replacement therapy, or gender affirming surgeries such as genital reconstructive surgery.<\/li>\n<li>Any and all documents establishing current guidance, rules, or similar content used by the Department of Health and Human Services to determine how to resolve complaints against a health insurance carrier for discrimination on the basis of gender identity, specifically by denying coverage for transition-related care such as mental health treatment, hormone replacement therapy, or gender affirming surgeries such as genital reconstructive surgery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The focus on transition-related care is purposeful; while we know that HHS has been taking some action to address other forms of discrimination against transgender people, I am unaware of any action by HHS, outside of its pending rule, to address this endemic form of discrimination by health insurance companies. \u00a0Complaints have been made (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/2014-11-30-HHS-OCR-complaint-re-CareFirst-Discrimination-on-Basis-of-Gender-Identity-redacted.pdf\">including one complaint I filed in response to particularly overt discrimination by CareFirst<\/a>, filed\u00a0in November 2014), but they don&#8217;t seem to ever get resolved.<\/p>\n<p>The FOIA response should reveal how many complaints there are on this issue, how many have been closed (and what disposition), and how HHS formally considers them.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)\u00a0finalizes its proposed rule prohibiting discrimination on the basis of gender identity in covered health programs, the question remains: what has HHS been doing since March 2010 to enforce the statute which prohibited such discrimination, 42 U.S.C. \u00a7 18116? \u00a0To that end, I have FOIAed the following [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[9,92],"tags":[6],"class_list":["post-672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foia","category-health","tag-hhs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5pI5m-aQ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=672"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/672\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.emily-esque.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}