County spent more to block transgender care than it would cost: Report

Georgia’s Houston County spent more than $1 million to avoid paying for a sheriff’s deputy’s gender transition surgery, saying it would be too costly for the county’s health plan, reports ProPublica. When she challenged the decision, alleging discrimination, the central Georgia county paid a private law firm nearly $1.2 million to fight Sgt. Anna Lange in federal court – far more than it would have cost the county to offer such coverage to all its 1,500 health plan members, according to expert analyses. One expert estimated that including transition-related care in the health plan would add about 0.1% to the cost of all claims, which would come to roughly $10,000 per year, on average.