Colorado Law Mandates Health Insurance Coverage for ‘Transgender’ Mutilations
A new Colorado law mandates health benefit insurance coverage for damaging, mutilating “transgender” medical interventions, such as opposite-sex hormones and surgeries for those who identify as the opposite sex – or a different “gender” entirely.
HB 1309 is euphemistically named “Protect Access to Gender-Affirming Health Care,” but real health care doesn’t involve sterilizing, disfiguring and harming patients.
The measure is an attack on common sense and religious freedom, requiring employers who oppose transgenderism for ethical or religious reasons to provide insurance coverage for expensive, injurious medical procedures.
The act mandates coverage for hormone therapy; removal of healthy breast tissue in women or “breast augmentation” in men; genital surgeries; and a variety of cosmetic surgeries such as rhinoplasties, “cheek, chin or nose implants” and “facial bone remodeling.”
Of course, none of these interventions can turn someone into the opposite sex – or some other made-up “gender.”
We have great concern for those struggling with gender dysphoria. But real kindness means helping children and adults embrace and celebrate their innate maleness or femaleness – not affirming mental illness or someone’s misguided desire to “transition.”
And, we especially want to protect children from these destructive practices.
Daily Citizen writer Glenn Stanton testified against the measure when it was being considered by the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee, saying:
HB 1309 is a horrible bill, the financial facilitator for children becoming gender medicine patients for life.
Make no mistake. This bill is not about compassion toward gender variant children. Not at all. It is an ideological bill fueled by toxic and false compassion and is deeply misguided.
Stanton explained to Colorado legislators that countries across the globe are turning away from these procedures for children because there is no evidence-based science for them and “the collected body of research does not support their use.”
HB 1309 also removes testosterone from The Colorado Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, a data-sharing system that allows “prescribers and dispensers to make more informed decisions when considering prescribing or dispensing a controlled substance to a patient.”
Health care workers won’t necessarily know which of their patients – including adolescent and teen girls and young adult women – are taking this powerful hormone which can have many negative side effects.
Girls and women are especially damaged by testosterone. Their bodies are not designed or equipped to handle high levels of this hormone as it causes permanent, harmful changes to their bodies.
In a post on X, Dr. Travis Morrell, founder of Colorado Principled Physicians and a senior fellow at Do No Harm, listed the monetary cost “to pay for every single” medical intervention listed in HB 1309 “for anyone who says they’re ‘trans’ – at any age.”
Here is just a sample of some of the medical interventions and the typical cost, as listed by Dr. Morrell, for each transgender-identified individual (procedures listed in all caps as in the bill):
- HORMONE THERAPY: a few hundred to couple thousand dollars a year [for life].
- FACIAL BONE REMODELING: $10,000-50,000 PLUS 50-100% for anesthesia/facility.
- CHEEK, CHIN, OR NOSE IMPLANTS: Cheek $12,622, can be $4000- $30,000, PLUS 50-100% for anesthesia/facility.
- BREAST OR CHEST AUGMENTATION, REDUCTION, OR CONSTRUCTION: $4,516 (average) for augmentation PLUS 50-100% for anesthesia/facility.
- GENITAL AND NONGENITAL SURGICAL PROCEDURES: can be $4000 to $60,000 or more, multiple stages, surgeries, plus complications.
HB 1309 received much less public attention than another Colorado bill, HB 1312, an extreme transgender act that threatens free speech, religious freedom, children’s health and parental rights, but it was introduced and fast-tracked through the legislature in the same way.
The legislation – and previous acts passed by the Colorado General Assembly – demonstrate that legislators are determined to force every group in the state to comply with the pernicious transgender agenda, including children, parents, educators, employers, Christian camps and now, health insurers.
The bill passed both chambers of the Colorado General Assembly along party lines, 23-12 in the Senate and 39-24 in the Senate. Governor Jared Polis signed HB 1309 at a press conference on Friday, May 23.
Related Articles and Resources
Back to School with LGBT Social Studies
Christian Summer Camp Sues Colorado Over ‘Transgender’ Rule
Citizens Speak Truth to Power at Colorado Sex Education Hearing
Colorado Bill Would Force Schools to Teach Homosexuality and Transgenderism
Colorado Governor Signs Extreme Act: ‘Legal Protections for Transgender Individuals’
Education Department Warns Colorado: Children ‘Do Not Belong to Government’
Exclusive Interview: Colorado Parents Expose ‘Gender Cult’ at Public School in New Documentary
Focus on the Family: Transgender Resources
Parents’ Rights Groups Sue Colorado Over Radical Trans Law
Teaching Deception? School District Adopts Gender Policy, Keeps Parents in the Dark
Transgenderism Trumping Parents’ Rights
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