Bill making doctors, insurers responsible for transgender medical care passes Texas Senate
AUSTIN — The Texas Senate has approved a bill that would make doctors and insurers responsible for future medical costs of patients who’ve received gender-affirming care.
LGBTQ advocates say the bill, which is opposed by the state’s largest medical group, would create such a burden on doctors and insurance companies that they would avoid or even refuse to provide such care. Sen. Bob Hall, the Edgewood Republican who wrote the bill, said it’s meant to provide support for patients who transition and either have complications or want to reverse their procedures.
“This would just simply say that if you’re going to transition someone, then you’re going to have to assume the responsibility to take care of them,” Hall said during debate on Tuesday.
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Senate Bill 1029 would make insurers and doctors “strictly liable” to cover any associated medical, mental and drug costs for patients who receive gender-affirming treatments for the rest of their lives, specifically if they want to reverse their treatments. Strict liability means patients would not need to prove negligence to recover compensation.
The bill would also ban state-funded insurance plans from covering these treatments and bar any public funds from going to provision of such care. The medical treatments covered in the bill include puberty blockers and cross-sex hormone therapies, as well as surgeries like mastectomy, phalloplasty and vaginoplasty, for both minors and adults.
The bill passed Tuesday by a vote of 18-12. It needs one more approval in the Senate before moving to the Texas House for further consideration.
This is one of several pieces of legislation advancing this session that would restrict the rights of LGBTQ Texans, including others that would criminalize drag performances, ban gender-affirming care for minors and require transgender athletes to compete according to their gender at birth.
Sen. Nathan Johnson, D-Dallas, asked Hall if the bill would require doctors to cover the costs of a willing adult patient, even if there were no medical complications.
“If a patient comes in and requests a procedure, and the physician provides the procedure and does so competently, that physician is nevertheless liable to that patient for anything that follows that procedure?” Johnson asked.
Hall responded: “That’s it.”
Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, offered four amendments. One would have banned conversion therapy, which is the practice of telling LGBTQ patients that, through counseling, they can overcome being gay or transgender. Hall opposed the change.
“The current practice of only allowing affirmative care to me would be like telling the psychologist, if an alcoholic comes to you and is trying to get off of alcohol, the only counseling you can give them is a need to drink more alcohol and get used to being drunk,” he said.
Menéndez’s four amendments all failed by a vote of 12-18.
Related:Texas bill banning transgender youth medical treatments passes another key vote
There are about 93,000 transgender adults living in Texas, according to a recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles. The state also has some 29,000 transgender people ages 13 to 17. This is less than 1.5% of Texans in that age group.
Every major medical and mental health organization, including the American Medical Association and American Psychological Association, support individualized and age-appropriate gender-affirming medical treatments. The Texas Medical Association, the state’s largest physicians group, opposes the bill because of the legal target it places on doctors.
The legislation “very much chips away at Texas’ medical liability reform, which has been so critical to Texas patients and physicians and patient care,” Dr. Gary Floyd, the TMA’s president, said Tuesday.
LGBTQ rights advocates say the bill would disincentivize the provision of gender-affirming treatments to transgender people.
“This bill says the quiet part out loud: These attacks are not about ‘protecting kids,’ they are intentionally designed to make life in Texas insufferable for trans people,” said Ricardo Martinez, who leads the LGBTQ rights group Equality Texas. “Our trans siblings deserve to access health care no less than their neighbors.”
Martinez called on LGBTQ Texans to make their opposition known: “We are ringing the alarm. If you care about your trans neighbors, now is the time to show up.”
Related:5 ways you could get in trouble under the Texas anti-drag show bill
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