Fulop: Why Jersey City will provide transgender-related health care for its employees | Opinion

By Star-Ledger Guest Columnist The Star-Ledger 
September 21, 2015 at  7:49 PM

By Steven Fulop

Tuesday afternoon, beneath a rainbow flag hung from city hall, a group of activists, citizens and elected officials will gather, and there we will announce that Jersey City will cover transgender-related health care for municipal employees. We'll be the first large city in New Jersey to do this.

Difficult decisions come across my desk all the time, decisions that cause me to wrack my brain, where the choice is far from clear-cut and the outcome far from certain.

This was not one of those decisions. This is obvious. This is right.

Transgender Americans face a unique injustice: The care they need – including gender reassignment surgery – is as essential as a heart bypass or cholesterol medication. It keeps people healthy. It lets them live life as they were meant to. But, too often coverage for this treatment is denied. Two in 10 transgender people have been refused care because of who they are. One in three face significant delays in getting necessary medical attention.

If there's a valid reason for keeping things this way, I haven't heard it.

Some argue that gender reassignment assignment is cosmetic, unnecessary; that their premiums shouldn't be raised because of it. I have no patience for this argument. It ignores the science. It's blind and callous to the plight of our neighbors. A study from UCLA last year found that over 40 percent of transgender individuals had attempted suicide. These are individuals, who often do not have the proper care, are forced to live as someone other than themselves.

There's a reason that many prefer the term "gender confirmation surgery" instead of gender reassignment surgery. No one is changing their gender; they are becoming their gender.

Nor is the cost even an issue. This is positive change that literally costs spare change. The Transgender Law Center estimates that covering transgender care only adds about 17 cents every year to a policy that would usually cost $4,000. And according to the Jersey City's healthcare providers, the expanded coverage will cost just one-tenth of one percent of the city's total health-care bill.

Upending these false perceptions is probably the most important outcome when a city like Jersey City covers transgender-related health care.

As a mayor – and as a human being – I'm certainly standing a little taller today, chest out, a little prouder of my community. But I'm also aware that our action is limited. Jersey City employs just 3,500 people. The new policy covers just a small population in a big country, where every city and everyone should be afforded these kinds of rights.

Indeed, this announcement isn't just about changing our insurance policies; it's about changing minds. It's about declaring, without equivocation, what our city – what all cities – should stand up for.

The fight for transgender rights has been long. Before Caitlyn Jenner and Laverne Cox, there was Christine Jorgensen, a former army private and Bronx native who was the first American to receive gender reassignment surgery in 1952. There was Renée Richards, the transgender tennis trailblazer who won the right to play in the women's draw at the 1977 United States Open.

These civil rights fighters worked across decades and fields. But in one way, their struggle was the same:  they did so without the explicit support of the communities in which they lived – or at least, without the support of the city halls and local governments and chambers that led them. For most of history, the fight for transgender rights has been a lonely one. And it's also been one in which government has been on the sidelines, at best – on the wrong side, at worst.

Government has the power to be a legitimizing force, something that pulls people in the direction of what is right.

Today in Jersey City, we intend to do just that. We join a group of roughly two dozen American cities today that have bucked history, and covered their transgender employees and leaders.

Of course, the fight for transgender rights is not done. It is, in many ways, just beginning. There will be more new policies, more education, more change to come. And after all that, there may still be holdouts, people for whom the mention of transgender issues will always be uncomfortable.

Today, however, at least we're declaring where government in Jersey City stands on that issue:  Government doesn't exist to make us comfortable; it exists to let us ... well, be us.

Steven Fulop is mayor of Jersey City.

http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2 ... ransgender-related_h.html

Jersey City to expand health benefits for transgender workers

By Terrence T. McDonald | The Jersey Journal The Jersey Journal 
September 21, 2015 at  7:02 PM

JERSEY CITY — Jersey City is expanding the health care it offers city workers to include coverage for transgender medical care and related procedures, including gender reassignment surgery.

Mayor Steve Fulop is expected to make the announcement tomorrow afternoon. City officials say Jersey City will be the first large city in the state, and one of a few in the nation, to offer such coverage.

Read more:  http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/20 ... enefits_for_transgen.html