By Esteban Fernandez, Times West Virginian
BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. — In a filing to the U.S. Supreme Court, the West Virginia Attorney General’s office stated the need to set health care priorities is what motivates the ban on funding gender-affirming surgery with Medicaid and not discrimination.
Attorney General Patrick Morrisey filed his petition to the court on Thursday. At a press conference in Bridgeport, he said the state needs to be able to prioritize how it decides what medical services it needs to cover. An 8-6 decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in April ruled West Virginia discriminated against transgender people by not covering gender-affirming surgery under Medicaid.
“The state’s Medicaid program is saying no to the transsexual surgery,” Morrisey said. “It’s a state that’s trying to help ensure we’re covering people with heart disease, diabetes and all sorts of medical conditions. We’re not a rich state, we can’t afford to do everything and that’s one of the challenges we have with this mandate. There’s only so much money to go around. Spending money on some treatments necessarily takes it away from others.”
Morrisey argued Medicaid already provides coverage for other forms of treatment for gender dysphoria. According to the filing, “the Bureau continues to cover psychiatric evaluation, psychotherapy, psychological evaluation, counseling, office visits, hormones, and lab work for Medicaid patients diagnosed with gender dysphoria.” Morrisey also called research around gender-affirming surgery and its necessity shaky, and framed it as an expensive elective surgery.
