TS Seeks Public Funds for SRS
By Associated Press
Contributed by Elizabeth Parker
PORTLAND, OR
April 9, 1998
Her long legs crossed, Olivia Jaquay
settles into a chair at a downtown coffeehouse, drawing an
interested glance from a man in a business suit at the next table.
Brushing her hair back with fuchsia-colored fingernails, she
talks of her love of vintage clothing, a penchant for rubies and
her pending nuptials to a man with whom she'd love to have a child.
At 42, she says she finally feels like a woman in every sense of
the word. Except one.
Jaquay must have one last reconstructive surgery to make the
transformation from male to female -- and she wants taxpayers to pay
for it under the state's health insurance plan.
She contends she suffers from a gender identity disorder, and
without the surgery would be left in a frustrating netherworld
between the sexes.
"I do not want to live in purgatory any more," Jaquay said.
She soon plans to testify before a state panel that will
help decide whether sex-change operations should be covered by the
Oregon Health Plan.
Transsexualism is 688 on the state's list of 745 ailments and
treatments. Only the top 574 are available to the 270,000
low-income residents enrolled in the plan.
Oregon, which in February became the first state to approve
coverage for assisted suicide, would not be the first to fund sex
changes. Minnesota has covered such surgeries since 1977, though
lawmakers are considering a bill to put a stop to it.
The issue has polarized the medical community, which is split on
whether sex-change surgery is elective or corrective.
"It's a complex issue," said Dr. Kathleen Weaver, medical
director of the Oregon Health Plan Policy and Research. "This is a
real thing for these people. But there is also some concern that
doing the surgery is not going to correct anything."
Weaver also fears another issue: if the operations are funded by
the state plan, that might entice patients outside Oregon to move
here for coverage. She points out that Portland plastic surgeon
Toby Meltzer annually performs 150 sex reassignment operations,
which start at $10,000. All but a few of his patients come from out
of state.
"That's $1.5 million -- a big piece of our budget," Weaver
said.
The surgery is not a cure-all. Some studies have show high rates
of depression and suicide following sex changes.
Jaquay said it saved her life. She had attempted to kill herself
several times.
She had gone through years of hormone therapy paid for by her
health maintenance organization, which contracts with the state
health plan. But it stopped paying when officials realized she was
leading up to a sex-change operation.
So last October, Jaquay hocked her Chevrolet Monte Carlo, sold
some jewelry and had a sex change anyway.
The decision was not made lightly. She'd been struggling with
her sexual identity from the time she was a little boy named
Oliver, saying a prayer each night that he would wake up without a
penis.
As a teen-ager, Oliver got kicked out of school and joined the
Army in 1973. He spent four years there hoping his desire to be a
woman was just a phase. It wasn't.
"Everything came naturally as a girl," Jaquay said. "I always
went into the women's restroom. I was trying to be something my mom
wanted, but I just wanted to wear her clothes."
Jaquay was diagnosed with gender identity disorder, a condition
recognized by the American Psychiatric Association in which a
person feels trapped in the body of the wrong sex.
The disorder, which some say lies in the physical structure of
the brain, is incurable. Treatment includes hormones, therapy and
surgery.
Before she had her surgery in the 1970s, Margaret Deirdre
O'Hartigan was an effeminate boy who liked wearing makeup, had no
interest in girls and tried to castrate himself. He was
institutionalized.
"This is a disability," said O'Hartigan, who three years ago
founded a nonprofit organization to obtain medical and legal
assistance for transsexuals. "When it's proven to be medically
necessary, it's an obscenity that it's not provided."
Jaquay said the ordeal is putting a strain in her relationship.
Her plan to go back to school for a degree in computers is on hold
and all the publicity is making it tough to find a job.
"We are not what you see on `Jerry Springer,'" Jaquay said.
"We are down-to-earth human beings."
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