Rita Bettis (file photo0
The ACLU of Iowa will go to court to try to lift the state’s ban on Medicaid coverage for transgender surgical care. Joe Freund is a family practice doctor in Des Moines who treats transgender patients.
“I’m passionate about this,” Freund said, “because I’ve lost patients to suicide because of the inability to get this care that they have needed.”
The plaintiffs in the case are two transgender women. EerieAnna Good lives in the Quad Cities and Carol Ann Beal is from northwest Iowa. Beal said she began taking hormone therapy when she was 14 and has lived as a woman since then. Beal said she’s joined the legal battle because someone needed to be a trailblazer.
“You go through so many years of transitioning and now I hit a brick wall with the Iowa discriminatory ban on Medicaid coverage and transition-related care,” Beal said.
Beal has an appeal pending at the administrative level of state government. Once that process has run its course, the ACLU will take its lawsuit to district court.
(By Rob Dillard, Iowa Public Radio)