Washington Actions Up Insurance Protections For Gender Affirming Therapies | Jackson Lewis P.C.

As some states make headlines for so-referred to as “anti-trans” rules, the Washington condition legislature rejected a bill built to limit youth participation in sporting activities dependent on their gender as assigned on a birth certificate and handed the new Gender Affirming Treatment Act.  This Act prohibits health insurers from denying or limiting coverage for gender affirming treatment when that care is recommended to an particular person centered on a guarded gender expression or identity, is medically necessary, and is recommended below recognized standards of care.

The Gender Affirming Treatment Act stops insurers from excluding the most typically recommended gender affirming solutions by classifying this kind of processes as beauty.  Underneath the new law, commencing January 1, 2022, non-public insurers, the Health Care Authority (HCA), managed care designs, and companies through Medicaid courses may not deny or limit protection for gender affirming treatment that is approved relating to the person’s gender expression or identification, is medically vital, and is recommended per approved specifications of treatment.  The legislation also forbids insurers from making use of categorical beauty or blanket exclusions to gender affirming treatment and excluding as cosmetic specified examples of medically necessary gender affirming treatment.  And a health care provider with encounter prescribing or delivering gender affirming treatment must overview and verify the appropriateness of an adverse benefit determination denying or limiting obtain to gender-affirming providers.

The law frequently defines “gender affirming treatment” as a services or product that a health care supplier prescribes to address any situation relevant to gender id less than normally approved specifications of care.  It also clarifies that gender affirming treatment can be approved for “two spirit, transgender, nonbinary, intersex, and other gender assorted persons.”

In line with the latest urging of the American Medical Affiliation to give minors with gender-affirming treatment to stay clear of tragic health implications, Washington’s Gender Affirming Treatment Act includes no age constraints.

The new legislation does not use to self-insured medical plans ERISA preempts any legislation that imposes these styles of specifications on self-insured medical designs.  But some substantial insurance plan companies have announced expanded protection for breast augmentation and other similar strategies for some trans women of all ages.  And since these firms normally also deliver administrative products and services to self-insured ideas, their purchasers may well choose to increase protection for other gender affirming treatment plans less than their self-insured ideas even absent a authorized need to do so.

The new law also raises federal tax difficulties for the reason that even though the IRS agreed to abide by a tax court docket determination that hormone treatment and gender reassignment surgery are acceptable “medical expenses” beneath Code Segment 213(d), the tax court attained the opposite conclusion concerning breast augmentation surgery.  In its 2020 edition of Publication 502 (Medical and Dental Bills), the IRS reaffirms its extensive-standing posture that beauty surgery is not a deductible medical expenditure.  But the IRS does not make clear how that place aligns with its previous positions relevant to gender reassignment surgery.  It is therefore unclear irrespective of whether masking the condition mandated gender affirmation treatments will or will not be regarded as qualifying medical fees and therefore no matter if payments by the insurance provider and premiums paid out by the employer for these mandated advantages can be excluded from the employee’s wages.