- A county in Georgia refused to change its health insurance plan to cover surgery for a transgender employee, citing cost.
- According to ProPublica, this bill would cost about $10,000 a year for transition-related care for employees.
- The county spent about $1.2 million in court costs and lost the case.
Local authorities in Georgia have refused to change the department’s health insurance plan to cover gender-confirming surgery for transgender employees, citing costs.
But Georgia’s Houston County ended up paying a private law firm about $1.2 million to fight its employees in federal court. Reported by ProPublica.
And this month, a federal judge ordered it cover employee transition care.
Sheriff’s Deputy Anna Lang, who filed a federal discrimination lawsuit, said, “It was a real slap in the face to find out how much they spent.
“They treat it like a political issue, but it’s clear it’s a medical issue,” she said.
According to legal documents, Lange confided in a colleague that she was a transgender woman in 2017 after working for the Houston County Sheriff’s Office for more than a decade. However, it turns out that the county’s health plan has exclusions that don’t cover the cost of the surgery.
Lange was able to pay with retirement and savings top surgery But he couldn’t afford the cost of a hip surgery that cost about $25,000, according to legal documents.
She sent letters to insurance administrators and counties asking them to remove her health insurance plan exclusions in both 2018 and 2019, but her appeals were dismissed, ProPublica reports.
In early 2019, she went to a county commissioner’s meeting to ask for her health insurance exclusion to be lifted.
The board said it would not make any changes, prompting Lange to sue the state for employment discrimination.
Lange said the county, which calls itself “Georgia’s most progressive county,” is exposing her to “inferior treatment” by denying her medical care.
county attorney Concerns Cited It warned of rising costs if exclusions were removed, and warned of a hypothetical situation where an employee might seek multiple surgeries in a year. According to ProPublica, Houston County spent her $57,135 on budget experts to claim.
Lange’s lawyers, on the other hand, hired their own experts, who said that including transition-related care in their health insurance would add about 0.1% to the cost of all claims — About $10,000 a year.
The amount is so small that it could be considered mathematically “insignificant,” experts say.
Houston County reported that it spent a total of $1,188,701 in direct payments to private law firms from the date the lawsuit was filed through December 31, 2022, citing claims records obtained by ProPublica. Attorney fees amounted to three times his annual budget for Houston County on physical and mental health, it said.
Houston County did not immediately respond to an insider’s request for comment.
After years of fighting in court, Lange won her case in 2022, with a federal judge citing: 2020 U.S. Supreme Court Decision on Employment Discrimination Based on Transgender Status.
The county appealed, but this month a federal judge ordered Houston County to cover transitional care for its employees, and Lange is now beginning the process of scheduling the surgery, according to ProPublica.