(Image by Angelo Esslinger from Pixabay)
A tiny 5.5 percent of transsexual "chest reconstruction" surgeries – radical procedures performed on healthy bodies and designed to make gender-confused people feel and look more like their opposite-sex "gender identity" – were "self-paid" by the individuals themselves, a new study has found.
Conversely, nearly 31 percent of those same surgeries were paid for by government health insurance, and almost 60 percent were covered by private health insurance, according to the study in Aesthetic Surgery Journal, which focuses mainly on plastic surgery research.
The December 2022 study, "Nationwide Estimates of Gender-Affirming Chest Reconstruction in the United States, 2016-2019," is the largest study to date of its kind, examining an estimated 21,293 "chest reconstruction" encounters over those three years.
"Generally, most TGD [transgender and gender-diverse] patients were covered by either public or private health insurance for these procedures," it states, "representing a shift from a predominance of self-payers reported in previous studies."
The study analyzed a "weighted estimate of 21,293 encounters for [transsexual] chest reconstruction" from 2016-2019, with 17,480 persons, or 82.1%, getting "masculinizing" surgery – i.e., women having their healthy breasts surgically removed to look like a man's chest.
The study estimated that 3,813 persons, or 17.9%, sought "feminizing" procedures, which translates to a plastic surgeon inserting breast implants into a gender-confused man's body to accommodate his self-perceived "gender identity" as a "trans woman."
The study's authors listed are all affiliated with Vanderbilt University: Rishub Das, Adam Evans, Christopher Kalmar, Salam Al Kassis, Brian Drolet and Galen Perdikis.
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The almost 60% coverage by private health-insurance plans for the controversial procedures testifies to the immense lobbying power of LGBT activists. A two-decades-long campaign led by the leftist, LGBT group Human Rights Campaign Fund, using its skewed "Corporate Equality Index," has successfully pressured an increasing number of major corporations such as Walmart and the Walt Disney Company into providing ever more comprehensive "health" coverage for their "trans" employees, as WND and Whistleblower magazine recently reported.
The ASJ academic article was unearthed by COVID-19 "frontline doctor" Peter McCullough, who wrote about it May 7 in his Substack, "Courageous Discourse."
Dr. McCullough, whose views on transsexual "gender surgeries" appear to be the polar opposite of the pro-trans Vanderbilt research team's, said the study indicates the number of body-mutilating procedures could be reduced if the government health insurance payments for them were removed.
"The bottom line is only 5.5% of transgender individuals pay for their cosmetic surgery, which is very different from normal male or female plastic surgery, which is almost always self-funded," McCullough writes. "Repeal of payment for gender-affirming surgeries would be expected to markedly reduce this disfiguring and unnecessary cost to the health-care system."
In the background section of the study's abstract, it states that "Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act [aka Obamacare], introduced in 2016, increased access to gender-affirming surgeries for transgender and gender diverse individuals. Masculinizing chest reconstruction (e.g., mastectomy) and feminizing chest reconstruction (e.g., augmentation mammaplasty), often outpatient procedures, are the most frequently performed gender-affirming surgeries."
The study reports that the median total charge for the "female-to-male" "masculinizing" operations is $30,537. For the "feminizing chest reconstructions," the average cost was $29,887.
1,130 minors received 'gender surgeries' in three years
In another finding, downplayed by the study's authors, the journal states, "Only 1,130 (5.3%) patients had gender-affirming chest reconstruction before age 18." That's a little more than 376 children per year from 2016-2019 going under the knife to have their young, healthy chests either surgically mutilated, in the case of girls, or reconfigured in the case of boys to create fake breasts – to achieve an opposite-sex body in line with their "trans" "gender identity."
"Most patients (74.2%) underwent chest reconstruction between the ages of 18 and 34 years," it reports.
"The study states its "results demonstrate substantial increases in the incidence of ambulatory gender-affirming chest reconstruction that are concordant with annual data on [gender-affirming surgery] from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons and reported trends in the prescription of gender-affirming hormone therapy."
IMPORTANT NOTE: Although millions of American parents send their precious children off to public school every day, imagining their kids' days will be filled with reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, sports and music, they're not only in for a shock – but for total BETRAYAL. Today's "public" (government) schools have become far-left ideological, political and religious indoctrination centers aimed at reprogramming and transforming America's children.
Kids are being taught to HATE their own country and to see themselves and their parents as racists – or victims of racists. They are sexualized and corrupted, and many are groomed into the dark LGBT world, with almost 6,000 schools prohibiting parents from even hearing about their child's transgender "transition." In between all the far-left indoctrination and sexual corruption, teachers take time to scare children to death about the near-term end of life on earth due to "catastrophic climate change." Another lie. But it's all classic Marxism/communism, with even the "3 R's" – reading, writing and arithmetic – now being corrupted with "woke," "1984"-style madness.
Perhaps never has the true threat of today's U.S. public school system been exposed as in the sensational April issue of WND's critically acclaimed monthly Whistleblower magazine, titled "THE GREATEST BETRAYAL: How Marxism and madness have taken over America's public school system." Whistleblower is available in both the popular print edition and a state-of-the-art digital version, either single issues or discounted annual subscriptions.
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