Aetna to Expand Coverage for Gender-Affirming Surgeries

Aetna to Expand Coverage for Gender-Affirming Surgeries

Aetna Agrees to Expand Coverage for Gender-Affirming SurgeriesOne of the nation's largest health insurers is agreeing to pay for breast augmentation for some trans women.Two years ago, Cora Brna, a health care worker in Pittsburgh, was devastated to learn that her insurance would not cover the breast augmentation she had planned to have along with a genital reassignment surgery.Credit...Sarah Huny Young for The New York TimesBy Reed AbelsonJan. 26, 2021, 1:39 p.m. ETAllison Escolastico, a 30-year-old transgender woman, has wanted breast augmentation surgery for a decade. By 2019, she finally thought her insurance company, Aetna, would pay for it, only to find that it considered the procedure cosmetic, not medically necessary, and refused to cover it.“I knew from my case, it wasn't cosmetic,” said Ms. Escolastico, who contacted a lawyer after she lost her appeal last year. “I knew I had to fight for this,” she said.Ms. Escolastico's surgery is now scheduled for February. Working with the Transgender Legal Defense and Education Fund, a nonprofit that advocates transgender rights, and Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll, a large law firm that represents plaintiffs, she and a small group of trans women persuaded Aetna to cover the procedure if they could show