Transgender ‘tweaks’ like hair removal and voice feminization should be funded by taxpayers, influential medical panel says

According to health officials in Canada, minor aesthetic procedures for transgender people should be funded by the government.

An editorial by doctors at the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) suggests that tax dollars should be paid for adjustments such as hair removal and facial injections.

Waiting lists for more invasive procedures such as breast surgery and genital reconstructions are on an average of four years in the US, but minimally invasive procedures could “help offset delays,” they claim.

“Minimally invasive procedures such as facial injections and hair removal warrant consideration for public health funding in Canadian jurisdictions,” wrote Dr. Katie Ross and Dr. Sarah Fraser, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

“Government funding for such proceedings, currently funded in only two jurisdictions in Canada, deserves serious consideration in all provinces and territories,” the authors concluded.

“I’m so happy, and I still am. It’s just a slightly softer version,” Mulvaney said of her transformation. She is pictured here a few weeks before the procedure

Canada has universal government-funded health insurance through its Medicare health system.

If the public funding model for the procedures were adopted in the US, this could mean that transgender people with government-funded health insurance could qualify for the facial “adjustments.”

Currently, an out-of-pocket patient in the US can expect to pay between $8,500 and $49,500 for facial feminization surgery, depending on how much treatment is done.

The doctors from the article, published in the journal CMA pointed out the added benefit of minimally invasive procedures that are “relatively low-risk and reversible” compared to hormonal and surgical routes.

They can also be performed by a wide variety of doctors.

For trans women, voice feminization and facial feminization surgery include surgeries such as reshaping the forehead and brow bone, contouring the jaw and chin, reshaping the nose (nose job), advancing the hairline, and shaving the trachea — a procedure to shrink the Adam’s apple.

Hair removal, for example removing facial hair from a biological male who wants to transition to female, or hair transplantation through electrolysis or hair plastics, is another option to bring an individual closer to the desired gender.

Whether or not these procedures are medically necessary for transgender people remains up for debate.

Some health insurance companies in the US may cover minor procedures to ease the gender transition process as part of gender dysphoria treatment.

The CMA doctors cited a 2021 study of transgender people who said they had higher self-esteem, more positive body image, felt more aligned with their gender, and experienced less discrimination after getting nonsurgical facial injections, compared to trans people who did not go through the procedures.

A larger study the same year also found that transgender women who had hair removed to make them look more like a woman had better mental health status than those who had no hair removed.

The editorial authors argue that while members of the public might argue that aesthetic procedures should be paid for privately, surgery to change the shape, position, or proportion of the ear has been publicly funded for years for children.

Those who have had the procedure, known as an otoplasty, have reported improvements in self-esteem and a decrease in anxiety about how they look.

Currently, only Manitoba and Yukon in Canada offer hair removal coverage. Yukon also covers facial feminization surgeries.