Student groups across Canada demand better gender-affirming healthcare
Organizers called to share their demands with Studentcare
Student groups from seven Canadian universities organized a phone banking campaign on Nov. 13 to demand better gender-affirming care (GAC) coverage from Studentcare.
Studentcare, the health insurance broker for several Canadian universities including Concordia University, has recently started offering GAC under their coverage. However, many trans and gender diverse (TGD) students have reported feeling that the current scope of insurance coverage does not meet their needs.
In Montreal, event organizers from Concordia and McGill University participated by emailing and calling Studentcare to have their message heard.
Alexandra Heggie, an event organizer and the executive director at the Community-University Research Exchange (CURE), expressed dissatisfaction with Studentcare’s insurance administration.
“The bureaucratic barriers are such that you could spend your whole undergraduate time at Concordia trying to access this care,” Heggie said.
Of these bureaucratic barriers, Heggie identified Studentcare’s eligibility criteria for GAC as a chief concern.
Under the current Studentcare policies, students must be diagnosed with gender dysphoria by a doctor or nurse practitioner to be eligible for coverage.
This policy is not in line with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care. It recommends the use of the ICD-11 standard of gender incongruity in cases where a diagnosis is necessary to receive GAC. The key difference is that a diagnosis of gender dysmorphia requires patients to experience “clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning” related to their gender incongruity.
According to Heggie, the process of receiving a gender dysphoria diagnosis can be complex and costly, which creates an additional barrier for students.
Studentcare currently offers a $10,000 lifetime maximum coverage for GAC, which is not enough to cover most gender-affirming procedures. Furthermore, organizers said that most students are required to pay out of pocket and then wait to be reimbursed. This means that students need to have access to tens of thousands of dollars to receive the full benefits of their insurance.
“You’re required to pay for the entire surgery upfront and then get compensated after,” Heggie said. “How many students do you know that have $10,000?”
Studentcare has also yet to offer fertility preservation as part of its coverage. Organizers said that for many people, fertility preservation is an early step in their transition and can be instrumental to initiating GAC.
Rachel Bainbridge-Sedivy, an event organizer and member of the McGill Trans Patient Union, said that phone banking was chosen to bring awareness to the needs of TGD students.
“We were trying to find a way to create a sense of urgency and a sense that this is something that the students want,” Bainbridge-Sedivy said. “This is something that there is demand for, this is something that is important.”
Due to operational challenges, turnout for the phone banking event was low in Montreal but organizers made their demands known nonetheless.
“[GAC] saves lives. Even if it’s not life-or-death, it improves lives. It makes people happier, it gives people the freedom to exist in the world in the way they want to, the way they deserve to,” Bainbridge-Sedivy said. “That should not be limited to people who can pay for it.”
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