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White paper: Gender Incongruence

Historically, corporate private healthcare provision has commonly excluded any treatment required for gender incongruence and/or gender dysphoria. However, in 2016 a large banking group confirmed they had restructured their benefits to provide cover for such treatment.

White paper: Gender Incongruence 1

This white paper from Healix considers what implications this approach is having on the corporate healthcare market. And investigates the importance for employers to obtain expert input to ensure the benefit structures they provide are consistent with the level of support they plan to offer, as well as the overall message they wish to convey to employees.

Key findings

  • The adoption of this holistic approach suggests that the ethos of private corporate healthcare is evolving to support benefits for a wide range of physical, emotional, sexual and mental health conditions.
  • While they are not comparable, supporting gender confirmation treatment may impact the provision of other traditionally excluded conditions, for example, assisted reproduction.
  • It is important for employers wishing to fund treatment for gender dysphoria to be aware of the possible requirements for ongoing treatment. And it would be reasonable to expect employers to provide benefits for ongoing needs such as psychological support to treatment of complications arising from hormone therapy, or individuals requesting revision surgeries.
  • The addition of gender confirmation benefits to corporate healthcare plans marks a milestone in the shift of the industry towards a holistic approach to employees, suggesting the emphasis is no longer being placed exclusively on medical necessity and disease.