This Georgia County Spent $1 Million to Avoid Paying for One Employee's Gender-Affirming Care
Officials in Houston County, Georgia, said gender-affirming surgery for sheriffs deputy Anna Lange was too costly. They spent more than $1 million on private lawyers in a fight to keep transition-related care from being covered by their health plan.
When a sheriffs deputy in Georgias Houston County sought surgery as part of her gender transition, local officials refused to change the departments health insurance plan to cover it, citing cost as the primary reason.
The county argued that even if the cost of expanding its insurance coverage to include transition-related health care was low on average, it could amount to much more in some years. The county also claimed that expanding the plans coverage would spur demands to pay for other, currently excluded benefits, such as abortion, weight loss surgery and eye surgery.
This month, the door reopened: Treadwell ordered Houston County to cover transition care for its employees. He admonished the county for misrepresenting the cost of Langes surgery in its most recent legal argument, calling the decision irresponsible. He stressed that no connection existed, anatomically or otherwise, between the surgery mentioned in the New York Times article and the one Lange sought. The county, he added, had already received a specific, much lower estimate for the cost of Langes requested surgery.
Treadwell also said the county was factually wrong in suggesting that other transgender people would seek out even more expensive care. It is undisputed that the Health Plans third-party administrator generally concluded that utilization of gender-confirming care was low, he wrote. In the four years this litigation has been pending, no other Health Plan members have sought gender confirmation surgery, or even identified as transgender.