House panel advances bill to require health plans to cover gender-affirming care

Gender-affirming health care encompasses a range of social and medical interventions to affirm someone’s internal gender identity, including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, permanent hair removal, voice therapy, and surgical interventions.

Rep. Leigh Finke (DFL-St. Paul) believes gender-affirming health care is medically necessary health care and therefore must be covered by health insurance policies.

A “very simple bill,” is how Finke, the state's first transgender legislator, views HF2607. “It just clarifies what is already mandated in insurance coverage for gender-affirming care.”

But the mandate she referenced comes about not through text in state law, but rather official positions issued by the Department of Health and other agencies stating that health care providers cannot discriminate against patients based on sex and gender identity.

Finke’s bill would clarify that: “No health plan that covers physical or mental health services may be offered, sold, issued, or renewed in this state that excludes coverage for medically necessary gender-affirming care.”

The House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee approved the bill, as amended, via split-voice vote Wednesday and sent it to the House Health Finance and Policy Committee.

Simple or not, the bill generated spirited debate.

Rebecca Delahunt, public policy director at the Minnesota Family Council, said there is a lack of medical consensus on how best to treat people seeking such care. She cited researchers in Finland, Sweden, and England who have reviewed studies on the safety and efficacy of pediatric medical transition treatments.

She said these countries and other European nations are rethinking the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors.

“In short, there is lack of consensus within the global medical community on how to treat minors,” Delahunt said. “The USA is behind our European neighbors in this understanding.”

Rep. Isaac Schultz (R-Elmdale Township) unsuccessfully offered an amendment that would have made “reversal of a prior gender-affirming procedure or treatment” a medically necessary gender-affirming procedure or treatment, thus also required to be covered by health insurance.

Finke said the amendment was unnecessary and redundant because existing law and the clarifying changes proposed in the bill to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity would also apply in those instances.