- Joined
- Mar 11, 2016
The short answer is it really depends on the specific insurance.
The long answer is that the floor for trooning out is lower but the ceiling is higher: it could be as little as a few thousand dollars or it could exceed a quarter of a million dollars.
Mental-health coverage is very expensive (over $100 for a 1-hour session) and there is an understanding that unless you come to a therapist with a specific, narrow problem like grief over a family member you will be seeing him/her routinely for an extended time. So monthly sessions will likely cost over $1,000/year while weekly ones can exceed $4,000/year. Inpatient stays can cost $10,000 a week and are not even that helpful - the doctors make sure the patients do not kill themselves but do not provide intensive treatment to make sure they can handle life after discharge. I have friends who really, truly struggled with depression and anxiety but realized going to the looney bin would not help because it was not designed for them. I feel awful because they're good people, they work hard, and they care for others but none of that changes the fact that they are miserable with no way to get the help they need. I know I can be snarky and abrasive on here but these people bring out my softer side.
Insurance also generally provides poor or no coverage for mental health treatment - they will say it is not covered and not even make a token contribution towards the bill (this is also the basis for most horror stories about American healthcare costs, mental health or otherwise). Then there is always the possibility that the therapist or psychiatrist is just not a good fit which forces the patient to find a new doctor, hope s/he is taking patients, then hope s/he is a better fit than the last one. This has been a long way of saying even baseline mental healthcare is fairly expensive and not guaranteed to work.
Coverage for trans surgeries on the other hand can range from "none" to "everything including surgery". Insurance covering SRS has less to do with getting the more expensive plan and more to do with the patient's specific employer - most Americans get insurance through their job so if the plans their company negotiated do not include trans healthcare they are out of luck. I know that the company I work for does not offer any trans coverage other than mastectomies for TiFs and I suspect that was because they already arranged to have it covered for women with breast cancer (so they were extending a benefit they already offered to a slightly larger customer base).
With this in mind trooning out on a plan with little to no trans coverage would easily cost six figures - TT Exulansic on YouTube has reviewed itemized lists of SRS billing and found they cost close to $200,000 between the doctors, nurses, anesthesiologist, OR booking, etc. By contrast a patient with a pro-trans healthcare plan would probably pay under $10,000 - the only costs would be a few visits with a therapist, infrequent endocrinologist or gender counselor visits for HRT, and costs associated with traveling to the SRS hospital & staying in a hotel during recovery (not sure why but this seems to be preferred over recovery in a hospital) .
Insurance also generally provides poor or no coverage for mental health treatment - they will say it is not covered and not even make a token contribution towards the bill (this is also the basis for most horror stories about American healthcare costs, mental health or otherwise). Then there is always the possibility that the therapist or psychiatrist is just not a good fit which forces the patient to find a new doctor, hope s/he is taking patients, then hope s/he is a better fit than the last one. This has been a long way of saying even baseline mental healthcare is fairly expensive and not guaranteed to work.
Coverage for trans surgeries on the other hand can range from "none" to "everything including surgery". Insurance covering SRS has less to do with getting the more expensive plan and more to do with the patient's specific employer - most Americans get insurance through their job so if the plans their company negotiated do not include trans healthcare they are out of luck. I know that the company I work for does not offer any trans coverage other than mastectomies for TiFs and I suspect that was because they already arranged to have it covered for women with breast cancer (so they were extending a benefit they already offered to a slightly larger customer base).
With this in mind trooning out on a plan with little to no trans coverage would easily cost six figures - TT Exulansic on YouTube has reviewed itemized lists of SRS billing and found they cost close to $200,000 between the doctors, nurses, anesthesiologist, OR booking, etc. By contrast a patient with a pro-trans healthcare plan would probably pay under $10,000 - the only costs would be a few visits with a therapist, infrequent endocrinologist or gender counselor visits for HRT, and costs associated with traveling to the SRS hospital & staying in a hotel during recovery (not sure why but this seems to be preferred over recovery in a hospital) .
Last edited:
