LGBT Access to Healthcare: An Issue for All Single Payer Activists

Date and Time:
Saturday, October 31, 2:15PM-3:15PM

Presenters: Donna Cartwright, Pride at Work; Annette Gaudino, ACT UP/NY, PNHP NY Metro & Campaign for NY Health.

Description: The LGBT community’s healthcare needs are routinely neglected and ignored by most employer-sponsored health plans and their unique healthcare concerns are anathema to the for-profit private insurance industry. This community also has a heroic history of activism around healthcare justice issues. This workshop will discuss why these issues are important for the single-payer movement and how LGBT activists can inspire and lead this movement.

Notes from Conference Participants:

90% of trans people experience discrimination in health care:

  • 70% turned away
  • lack of timing/awareness - much left to the states
  • medical coding is discriminatory

30% put off doctor's care altogether

single payer = no more fracturing within LGBT community, one federal definition of trans care

unconscious structural barriers

HIV/AIDS movement = changing definition of a sick person -> single payer was a part of this movement, but never caught hold

marriage + employment = health care still

big finance = people's every day lives

give room for narratives for trans people

trans people liberating all of us by showing we can all express ourselves however we want

white young men treated as the clinical "average"

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