Last Updated on: 26th February 2014, 09:01 am
This
makes me angry almost beyond words.
The Ontario government has announced that it will resume covering sex-change operations under it’s health insurance plan in the near future. This is the same health insurance plan that does not cover things such as eye exams, not to mention the same health insurance plan that had my family wondering how much of my dad’s care would be covered when he had his stroke a couple of years ago and hoping that we could sort out what kind of coverage he had through private insurance so that his hospital stay wouldn’t cause financial problems for him if/when he got out.
The article I linked above doesn’t nearly do this story justice, at least not compared to the report on my local TV news the other night. In that story, supporters of the change were crowing about how these kinds of surgeries should be covered on human rights grounds and that they’re a quality of life issue, oh, and we can’t forget a matter of life and death because a few people offed themselves because they felt they had been living in the wrong body.
I have no problem with somebody wanting to become a new person, and though my words might indicate otherwise, I don’t have that much of a problem with the government helping them out. What I do take issue with is all of this human rights and quality of life business. It’s a violation of somebody’s rights that the government won’t foot the bill for a cock snip, but delisting exams that could allow a person to continue to live his current life with the eyesight he already has is perfectly fine? To quote somebody who’s name escapes me at the moment, “horsepebbles!”
If the government wants to spend my money on this they can go ahead, but they’d better be prepared for all of the whining from everybody else who wants elective surgery, and for the justified complaining from people who can’t get funding for medical care that truly falls under the category of life-saving.