© 2009-2012
Trans Media Watch

Charity registered in England
Number 1144430
 

Guidance for the Media - Common Misunderstandings

“The NHS shouldn’t be spending taxpayers’ money on this”

It isn’t our intention on this website to offer judgements about how the NHS spends its limited resources, and it is impossible to ignore the claim made on those resources by any number of patient groups, all of whom may have well founded cases to make.

However, the reporting trans people’s rights to health care in this country, its cost and delivery are routinely misrepresented in the media – sometimes with malicious intent.

The reality is:

  • Transsexualism, the condition for which trans people usually receive treatment, is a medically recognised condition, entirely acknowledged by the medical profession. Though work is ongoing, evidence is emerging that the roots of the condition may lie in the activities of hormones in the womb, the chromosomal makeup of the individual and/or the emergence of various brain structures.

  • Transsexualism kills people. Suicide rates amongst trans people are significantly higher than average, and suicide attempts are commonplace. For others, without help, it causes depression, anxiety, dependencies, social isolation and breakdown.

  • Untreated transsexualism is expensive. In treatment for depression, in the cost of lost time at work, and in the uncountable cost to families which have broken up, or lost members through suicide.

  • Transsexualism responds extremely well to medical intervention. Given timely support and help, outcomes amongst transitioning people are often excellent. Offering appropriate hormones at an appropriate stage can make a huge difference. Gender Confirmation Surgery has a very low ‘regret’ rate, and - despite the very few who come to regret the path they have taken (and efforts to undermine trans people in the media) – the large majority go on to live lives in which they ‘fixed’ their problem, needing no further treatment (apart from ongoing HRT at a cost lower than the prescription charge).

  • Access to NHS support in the UK remains very restricted. Gender Clinics around the UK are often hugely overstretched, meaning long waiting times for appointments at which certain help may be offered after the patient has ‘qualified’ by stages. Trans people sometimes have to face a draconian set of ‘conditions’, which many find humiliating, to qualify for help at all.

    When that help is available, it often takes many many months. Beyond this, when and if they are eventually referred for GCS, their Primary Care Trust may chose not to pay for their procedure – claiming that it represents an ‘exceptional’ funding request for which the money is unavailable. This interpretation has been defeated in court, but the problem remains. Some trans people commit suicide whilst on the waiting list for GCS.

  • The upshot of this is that many trans people seek treatment abroad, paying out of their own pockets for GCS. Many would prefer to have surgery in the UK but a combination of waiting times (through the entire NHS ‘pathway’ from initial referral to GIC to surgery via various other stages) and funding difficulties makes this impossible for them.

  • Beyond this, the NHS will not routinely pay for treatments which are acknowledged by many to be strongly correlated to the likelihood of a successful outcome for transitioning people. These include facial surgeries (to acquire features more in keeping with one’s inner identity and also to protect oneself from public ridicule), speech therapy, hair removal, or breast augmentation. In the vast majority of cases, the transitioning person must find the money for all this her/himself – adding up to tens of thousands of pounds and creating even more strain upon finances that may have been decimated by loss of family, home and/or job.

  • When the NHS does provide GCS, it is providing surgery which in the private sector in the UK costs £8000 - £12000 (not – as reported by some tabloid newspapers - £60,000). In addition, the number of GCS surgeries carried out in the UK remains tiny by comparison with many better known procedures, and in the context of an NHS annual budget of well over £100 billion.

BM TMW - LONDON - WC1N 3XX