Another nail in the coffin for Starbucks.
Via Daily Mail:
Starbucks is expanding its healthcare coverage for transgender employees in order to cover more procedures.
The coffee shop chain, which has covered gender reassignment surgery for its workers since 2012, announced earlier this week that it has updated its insurance policy.
It will now cover procedures that were once deemed cosmetic, and were therefore not covered by insurance, such as breast augmentations or reductions, hair transplants, and facial procedures.
‘The approach was driven not just by the company’s desire to provide truly inclusive coverage, and by powerful conversations with transgender partners about how those benefits would allow them to truly be who they are,’ Ron Crawford, vice president of benefits at Starbucks, said in a press release.
‘I view this as a diagnosis with a treatment path,’ he added. ‘You have to think of it from an equity perspective.’
Starbucks worked with the World Professional Association for Transgender Health to come up with its new health insurance plan.
‘Starbucks was not afraid to ask all the right questions and demand that people get the best possible care,’ Jamison Green, the immediate past president of WPATH, who worked with the company on the benefits package, said.
‘We produced a list of the most crucial benefits and those that are deemed problematic to insurance companies, such as facial feminization and electrolysis.’
Jamison said that many procedures considered cosmetic aren’t optional but essential for trans people.
A procedure such as electrolysis can be ‘a life-saving procedure for trans women,’ he said.
Jamison, who transitioned in 1988, said he once worked for a company that provided robust health insurance, but with one significant exclusion.
‘It was Item 17,’ he said.
‘No services will be provided that have anything to do with transsexual services or sex change.
‘I said, “Oh my God, how am I ever going to get anything done?” When they take away your health care, they take away your humanity.’