I posted a few weeks ago regarding my attempts to get ky employer to buy better healthcare coverage for things like ffs, ba, dm, laser and countouring, etc.

I had prepared SO many pieces of data to present to them. Had a meeting yesterday at the end of my workday and was almost brought to tears by what they said (in a good way). This is super important!

Blue Cross of MI updated their trans "coverage package" on Jan 1st 2024 to include tons of things that weren't covered in the previous year. This includes most of FFS, BA, and double mastectomy. Still no laser for anything but pre-srs, and no contouring whatsoever or anything to do with hairline, and voice surgery is in a kind of grey area.

What happened, why did my coverage document state that most of this stuff wasn't covered?

Open enrollment is in November, so all of the documents for our employer-sponsored healthcare plan were likely prepared in the summer of 2023, and then released to us in October. That meant, while things were indeed covered, they weren't written as such just simply because nobody had any guidance otherwise. Since the addendum to coverage happened in January, the documents just never showed it.

What this means to folks (specifically with employer sponsored healthcare with BCBS MI and likely other Blue Cross locations) is that if your company generally has low trans healthcare coverage but has it, you might have most of ffs covered and BA covered. The folks at my job explained that they try to buy things in a "package" sort of, and that BCBS's general coverage documents apply to everything they do, even if it's negotiated seperately. In certain cases they go above and beyond, but I was told that official docs from the servicer are a good litmus test.

So apparently I could have scheduled ffs months ago. Kind of irritating, but also such a blessing.

If anything I would expect a LOT of private healthcare documents to get drastic increases in trans surgery coverage starting in 2025!

Look for your servicer and find any pdf from this year that offers guides on trans coverage, and then present it to your HR to see if it applies to you.

Yay!