Until recently, nearly all public and private health plans in Washington State excluded coverage for gender transition-related care. These unfair policies not only ignored evidence that transition-related care is medically necessary and life-saving for many transgender people, but they also ran afoul of laws that prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sex. Legal Voice is proud to be a founding member of the Coalition for Inclusive Healthcare, which has worked to

Washington’s Public Employees Benefits Board (PEBB) voted unanimously to provide inclusive health benefits for transgender people covered by PEBB plans. The board approved providing coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria, a well-recognized medical condition in which the sex a person is assigned at birth does not match the gender they know themselves to be. Plans will cover non-surgical services to treat gender dysphoria by January 1, 2015, with coverage for surgical servi

Legal Voice, our partners in the Coalition for Inclusive Healthcare, and transgender Washingtonians won an important victory today when Washington State Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler made an announcement clarifying that health insurance policies sold in Washington State cannot discriminate against transgender people. Though insurance discrimination based on gender identity has been banned in Washington since 2006, private health insurance policies routinely include cla