Victory! New York State Lifts Medicaid Ban on Transgender Health Care

March 19, 2015 - Transgender New Yorkers covered by Medicaid can now access the medically necessary health care they have been denied for nearly two decades! Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Department of Health have officially adopted a new regulation that ends the 17-year-old exclusion of transgender health care from New York’s Medicaid program

The new regulation, which formally took effect on March 11, eliminates a 1998 regulation which stated that coverage “is not available for care, services, drugs, or supplies rendered for the purpose of gender reassignment….” In 2013, TLDEF submitted a 38-page letter urging the state to rescind the 1998 regulation. The new regulation ensures coverage for many common treatments for gender dysphoria, the diagnostic term used to refer to discomfort or distress caused by a difference between a person’s gender identity and their sex assigned at birth. -transgenderlegal.org