Healthcare for LGBTQ+ People Now
We’ve been here before. Back when we had to organize free mammograms for lesbians and bisexual women who otherwise weren’t getting screened. Anxiety about the exam, homophobia from providers, and lack of health insurance all resulted in an alarmingly high rate of breast cancer in the LGBTQ+ community. We took matters into our own hands. We didn’t wait.
Later, we took on tobacco. I watched lung cancer take our community’s leaders and knew that smoking was seen as part of our legacy. Of course, LGBTQ+ people took up cigarettes after being kicked out of our homes, losing our jobs, getting harassed on the streets — we took refuge in our bars. We then learned that the tobacco industry was spending millions to get us hooked. They targeted our pain. We said no thanks and kicked tobacco out.
I hung out with gay men giving away candy and condoms. I kept them distracted while they had their blood drawn for HIV tests and reminded them that we were in this together no matter what. Honest information about how to stay safe and have fun needed our unique voice. We fought hard for trials and treatments and fought back stigma and shame. We did it all the while the music was very very loud. We sped up progress together.
In the early days, the aughts as they are known, I flew across the United States with my then-partner for his top surgery. He chose his plastic surgeon based upon looking at friends’ chests and comparing stories over campfires. We saved money for years to pay out of pocket. We rented a condo from Craigslist and friends sent brownies and Arnica. The waiting room was full of brochures of pretty women getting new breasts and there wasn’t a rainbow flag in sight. We were on our own and we figured it out.
As patients, we ask each other when we have a question about major life decisions. Who to go to. What it was like. How to pay for it. This is what we’ve always done. We support each other because we want to stay alive.
As advocates, we take highly charged and anxiety provoking conversations and make them easier. We do it with little funding and a lot of compassion. We do it because no one else gets us.
We organize in the face of ignorance and judgement to advance the LGBTQ liberation movement, ensuring a better life for all. We have always given each other the respect and dignity we deserve.
Healthcare has changed. Dramatically. With the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and then further strengthening of the nondiscrimination laws, healthcare for transgender and nonbinary people is now more fully covered in private and public insurance. The forms we fill out are changing every day to include our gender identities so the care we receive affirms the bodies we have not the sex we were assigned at birth.
Every field of medicine is creating the knowledge and policies we need — ensuring that areas like OB/GYN, dermatology, internal medicine, psychiatry, endocrinology all have the best standards of care for LGBTQ+ patients. I can show any pediatrician now a growing body of evidence that puberty blockers save the lives of gender diverse kids.
Supporting trans kids is good medicine.
LGBTQ+ patients of all ages have unique healthcare needs and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. Just like when I started, healthcare access is the frontlines of the LGBTQ movement. But unlike any moment before in our history, doctors and other healthcare workers are in this fight with us. Some of them who belong to the LGBTQ+ community are even leading the charge. As LGBTQ+ patients and advocates, we have and will continue to fight for our community’s health and well-being.
I have never been more hopeful or sure of our success.
