Defunding sex-changes is not discrimination

Calgary Herald, Canada
Defunding sex-changes is not discrimination
By Naomi Lakritz, Calgary Herald
April 15, 2009 3:03 AM

Yes, the government's decision to axe funding for sex-change surgery
is discriminatory, but not the way transgender people think it is.

"Discrimination" in this instance refers simply to the act of having
to discriminate by choosing among a number of budget options because
there isn't enough health-care money to go around. It seems more than
a tad paranoid to instantly ascribe the delisting of sex-change
surgery to latent bigotry, when the province has been paying for it
for more than a decade.

In fact, the province continued funding this surgery all those years
while beds were being closed and other services went without. It's
been the same bunch of Tories all along -- the same ones,
incidentally, who are putting sexual orientation into the human-rights
law.

Are we really supposed to believe that while they're doing the right
thing by the law, and after years of paying for the surgery, they're
suddenly and simultaneously hell-bent on persecuting the
transgendered? That's quite a stretch.

I'm no fan of the Tory government, but accusing them of violating
human rights in this case is ridiculous. Choices have to be made at
budget time, and in the grand scheme of priorities, elective surgery
in non-life-or-death situations is a logical target. Let's face it --
no matter how much it is claimed that doctors say a sex-change
operation is medically necessary, the surgical reshaping of one's
physical gender characteristics is not on a par with heart bypasses or
tumour removal. It is akin to cosmetic surgery. And like cosmetic
surgery, it should be paid for out of pocket.

Shall we also say the Tories are bigoted toward chiropractic patients,
since they delisted funding assistance for those folks, too? Maybe
chiropractic patients should file a human rights complaint against the
province, since the Tories apparently hate people who want neck and
back adjustments as much as they hate the transgendered.

This business of filing human rights complaints to force government to
give you taxpayers' money sets a very disquieting precedent.
Government must be free to manage its budget matters as it sees
fit--accountable to the taxpayers whose money it is, not to a human
rights commission. But just hypothetically, you know who should really
be filing a human rights complaint against the province over
health-care spending? No, not the transgendered crowd.

Cancer patients -- that's who.

Last week, Calgary oncologist Dr. Peter Craighead said that wait times
for treatment are bound to get longer because space is so limited at
the Tom Baker Cancer Centre, which has been over-capacity for six
years. The new provincial budget, however, has no money for expansions
or even a whole new centre. Do those clamouring the loudest over this
grievous injustice done to the transgendered feel one bit of
embarrassment for making such a fuss about funding when the survival
of cancer patients is at stake without timely radiation and
chemotherapy?

Shame on these people who are in good health, but who are trying to
force the province to pay up via the human rights commission, when
cancer patients stand to suffer much graver consequences.

The argument that the $700,000 a year spent on sex-change surgery is a
drop in the ocean of the health-care budget, doesn't wash. There's a
principle at stake here -- as long as there's no money in the budget
for life-and-death essentials like more timely cancer care, the
non-essentials must fall by the wayside. That $700,000 needs to be
disbursed into the "essential" category to maximize the good it can
do.

There is no doubt that people who want sex-change operations feel a
very real need to have it done to make their lives complete. But they
also go through years of counselling and preparation for such a
momentous transformation--years in which they could be setting aside
the money and saving up for the surgery.

You want to talk about human rights? How about the right of a
15-year-old boy with leukemia to live to see his dreams of university
and a career materialize? What about the right of a 40-year-old woman
with breast cancer to live to see her young children grow up? Cancer
violates human rights in so many ways every single day. Governments
cannot fund everything, and when the money isn't there for the Tom
Baker Centre, then it shouldn't be spent on a fringe group whose
lives, unlike those of cancer patients, do not hang in the balance.

nlakritz@theherald.canwest.com
€ ¦© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Defunding+changes+discrimination/1498579/story.html

Any way you cut it, health care costs

Edmonton Sun, Canada
Wed, April 15, 2009
Any way you cut it, health care costs
By MINDELLE JACOBS

You can have Cadillac health care. You want lots of doctors, no
waiting lists and coverage for virtually all your medical and
psychological needs? Sure.

But there's a price to pay. I know, you're already pinching pennies
because your nest eggs have been decimated and you're wondering how
you're going to put the kids through college.

Still, if you want unlimited health care, hand over half your
paycheque to the government.

And stop complaining. Did you think you could have low taxes and
broad-based, state-paid services?

Chiropractic procedures are no longer covered in Alberta. And the
province is no longer paying for gender reassignment surgery.

The transsexual community has vowed to take the issue to the Alberta
Human Rights and Citizenship Commission today on the grounds that
sex-change surgery is medically necessary.

Is the province dumping on transsexuals because it figures, probably
correctly, that Albertans won't make much of a fuss over delisting
operations for a tiny minority of people who feel trapped in the wrong
bodies?

Or does sexuality have nothing to do with it and is Health Minister
Ron Liepert simply trying to make difficult decisions on how to fund
health care in the face of a $4.7-billion deficit?

I am not opposed to state coverage of sex-change surgery because it
involves so few people.

As transsexual Michelle Drinkell pointed out on Monday, the $700,000 a
year the province hopes to save by delisting the procedure is a
"teardrop in the ocean" of the $13-billion health budget.

On the other hand, the decision over whether to cover medical services
shouldn't be based on numbers, emotion and complaints to human rights
commissions but on what we consider medically necessary.

That's the wider public policy discussion Albertans need to have.

Experts will tell you it can be incredibly psychologically damaging
for transsexuals who can't afford sex-change surgery.

BAD TEETH

But there are lots of people with bad teeth who grow up to be
depressed, timid, emotionally beaten-down individuals because they
can't afford dental work.

Others have facial disfigurations that cause them no end of teasing,
embarrassment and loss of self-confidence, yet the government won't
cover certain operations.

And what about diabetic supplies, optical services and prescription drugs?

Perhaps there should be a whole parade of Albertans marching to the
human rights commission.

Then again, is the human rights commission the right body to determine
what should be covered under the medicare umbrella?

It is properly the function of government to make these arduous decisions.

The trouble is, no one knows Liepert's plan.

It's highly unlikely, however, that he's intent on imposing "an
American two-tier-style health system," as the fearmongering Friends
of Medicare squawked yesterday.

Even the Alberta Tories realize that Canadians want to preserve our
universal access system, even as we experiment with reforms.

Because of rising health-care spending, Alberta could be facing "a
more strained fiscal future," warns a new University of Calgary report
on the sustainability of the province's medicare system.

Alberta can either control expenditures (angry patients), raise taxes
(angry voters) or create a health endowment fund to pay for future
medicare costs (expensive), the report says.

Pick your poison, folks.

MINDY.JACOBS@SUNMEDIA.CA
Copyright € ¦© 2009, Canoe Inc. All rights reserved.
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Comment/2009/04/15/9116231-sun.html