FAYETTEVILLE -- A benefits committee that advocates for faculty and staff members at the University of Arkansas has asked that gender-transition treatments be reinstated in the employee health care plan.

"As a committee, we wholly support the transgender members of our University of Arkansas campus and system and feel as though the situation they face is deeply upsetting. We request that the coverage promised be immediately reinstated," states the March 7 letter from the Fringe Benefits Committee at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.

The letter, addressed to Chancellor Joe Steinmetz and "campus leaders," comes after a decision made by the UA System to suspend coverage offered briefly earlier this year.

The UA System cited a Dec. 31 injunction from a Texas judge that halted federal enforcement of nondiscrimination regulations related to gender identity. The regulations, developed under the Affordable Care Act, prohibit health plans from automatically excluding gender transition-related treatments from coverage.

In a message to campuses, the UA System stated that coverage began Jan. 1 "in compliance" with the regulations, but was to be suspended after March 6 "given the most current court ruling." The suspension of benefits would continue "pending the final legal outcome of the injunction or further clarification of the ACA coverage guidelines."

The letter to Steinmetz questioned the reasoning behind the decision.

"As a committee, we wholly reject the decision given for stopping the coverage and would like it reinstated. Whether or not something is or isn't required by the Affordable Care Act is immaterial to whether or not the University of Arkansas System should cover it within our plan," states the email, released under the state's public disclosure law.

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The email was submitted by committee Chairman Roy Hatcher, an information technology security analyst, and Vice Chairman John Delery, a business management professor.

Delery said in a phone interview that the message was addressed to Steinmetz because "we assume he could take this to" UA System President Donald Bobbitt.

Others on campus have also vocally opposed the UA System decision. The UA student organization People Respecting Individual Differences and Equality has circulated an online petition and organized rallies in support of reinstating the health care benefits.

At UA's faculty senate meeting on Wednesday, Debbie McLoud, the campus's top human-resources official, said: "And we're for it. We are strongly voicing our concerns to the system office, and anything that we get we're forwarding on to them."

However, UA spokesman Mark Rushing did not respond Friday or Monday to a question about whether campus leadership had taken a position in favor of restoring the benefits.

In January, Teri Wright, a transgender woman, told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that finding health treatment has been difficult because of exclusions in the health care plan of her spouse, a UA System Division of Agriculture employee.

"I can hope and that's all I can do. I can raise awareness and hope that things will change," Wright said last week.

The UA System oversees a self-funded health care plan that enrolls approximately 35,900 employees and family members from Fayetteville and other campuses. A spokesman, Nate Hinkel, has said he does not have an estimate on the number of insurance claims relating to what's known medically as gender dysphoria.

Sean Cahill, a Boston-based researcher who studies homosexual, bisexual and transgender health policy issues, said that because the number of transgender persons is small, covering gender transition-treatments "really doesn't increase the cost of health care coverage for the general population."

Last year, The Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law estimated the U.S. transgender adult population as about 1.4 million, or about 0.6 percent of the country's adult population.

Procedure costs vary. Last year, a report in The Boston Globe included a statement by a doctor who has performed the procedures. The doctor, Rachel Bluebond-Langner, told the Globe that female-to-male surgery procedures costs about $70,000, while male-to-female surgery might cost $20,000.

Among schools in nearby states responding to a question from the Democrat-Gazette, the University of Missouri System stated its employee health plan covers gender-transition treatments. Gender reassignment surgery is excluded in the University of Oklahoma employee health plan, a spokesman said.

Cahill, director of health policy research for The Fenway Institute, called the UA System's decision "unfortunate."

"What transgender people want and need according to their medical providers is gender-affirming health care, and for some transgender people that means surgery and hormones," Cahill said.

Metro on 03/14/2017