Nah, if it were sweeps, they would have combined them into a 2-hour special on transgender dwarfs. :)

Let's see...guesses on the incidence of transsexuality run from 1 in 1e4 to 1 in 3e4. Genetic dwarfism is given as 1 in 1e4. So...assuming the tendencies are independant, this would give a joint incidence of around 1:2e8...in a population of 300 million, this *might* yield two individuals if you were lucky.

So...one hour on each one? I don't think so.

Let's consider the obligatory jokes about "tail end of the show" and "short subject" to have been made. :-)

Before the show on dwarfism was one on obese people. :)

I watched it at 1...definitely interesting. I have to give props to Jonni (the wife of Angela, the air force pilot that went through the operation). She seemed very interested in the whole process and non-judgmental...what a great support system to have.

Yeah, she was pretty amazing. The voiceover about "ego strength" was very appropos; most spouses don't have that much, and I do admit it's calls for quite a lot.

But to *watch* the surgery? I dunno. I'm glad I was asleep for mine, and I had not much interest in seeing anybody else's. Yuk. A close friend of mine used to yank my chain about how green I got when surgical video was shown at a gender support group many years ago. And yet her surgery only happened this June. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Gwennie and I were speculating that Jonni was probably a nurse or an MD. In fact, my own ex was fascinated by some of the goings on at the hospital where my work was eventually done, when we were there with somebody else several years before my own surgery.

I did also note that Jonni's personal energy seemed fairly butch...even to her chosen nickname. These things aren't accidental.

Sweeps were November 18-24, so <i>Changing Sexes: Male to Female</i> was indeed aired on the last day of sweeps. So we're controversial enough to generate eyeballs for advertisers, but too controversial for insurance to cover the surgical costs...unless you're a union member, that is. C'est la vie.

Wow.. you actually think insurance should pay for transgender surgery? Based on what grounds?

They pay to correct other birth defects. Maggie, do they pay for procedures to correct hermaphordites?

If you go with that rationale, who will determine on a case-by-case basis, those for whom this birth defect exists?

Even if you want to make that argument, there are many types of birth defects. Insurance companies pay for life-threatening or medically necessary defects, but they don't pay for quality-of-life procedures.

Some people would consider being born ugly a birth defect. Do you think insurance companies should pay for them to have plastic surgery?

Oh, dear....yet another can of worms.

Do I think insurance "should" cover reassignment? Well....given that I consider it an effective treatment for a medically-recognized condition: yes.

Do I *expect* it? Absolutely not...I've worked for insurance companies, and given how few people this affects, what happens is they specifically exclude it in the plan language, and not enough people care about it to make them change it, so the current situation is likely to continue.

I *do* know people who have had insurance that was good enough that it was covered. As it happened, my company mereged with another just before my surgery, and we of course got the lowest-common-denominator coverage. The company we mereged with had just had an employee whose surgery was covered. Mine wasn't. C'est la vie, like I said.

Those who have or are about to hold forth on "cosmetic surgery" I remind that not all plastic surgery is "cosmetic" surgery...reconstruction after an accident, for example. There's plenty of women who have gotten breast augmentation--or reduction, for that matter--covered as "medically necessary".

As for "birth defect", there's enough controversy about that, too. Until the etiology of transsexualism is *much* better established than it is today--today there are only theories, with sketchy experimental evidence--I don't think universal acceptance of it as a "birth defect" is within realistic reach.

Typically, (and the well-moneyed folk who appeared in the Discovery channel show are *not* typical) TS folks are not in a position to engage in a long legal battle with their insurance companies to establish that reassignment surgery is "medically necessary"...especially when the insurance company is perfectly willing to invest in expert witnesses (mostly from Johns Hopkins, originally a center for treatment for gender dysphoria but now the mecca for the anti-SRS crew) who are happy to testify that it isn't.

The insurance companies will spend a *whole* lot more than the $20K or so they'd be out for covering one case to keep this one off the books. So an individual could spend *all* the money that would pay for their surgery, plus quite a bit more, and then still end up with nothing to show for it.

Personally, I thought my SRS was "medically necessary", and so-voted with $13K of my own money. I also think it should have been covered, but I do know that most people--who really have no idea what gender dysphoria is--would disagree.

Of course, I don't think I "should" have to pay for lung cancer treatment for smokers either--but have accepted that I have to, because the incidence of that is so much higher: just about everybody knows someone who killed themselves with cigarettes.

It's really a political issue--a matter of how many people something like this affects.