My insurance sucks. I’ve just been denied coverage for:
- Therapy (I appealed that)
- Dental work (out of network even though they “take my insurance”)
- Planned Parenthood gender affirming care meeting
Furthermore, my doctor’s appointment with Doctor’s on Demand was cancelled with no explanation (I was going to go with a primary care physician to ask some questions about HRT).
United Healthcare sucks and I need help. I’ve heard of DIY HRT but it sounds sketchy to me. I’m willing to get there, but I’d like to exhaust all possibilities before I go down that path. I picked Planned Parenthood because they seem like a safe space. My current primary care physician is sort of conservative coded. He made some comments at our last appointment that made me feel like HRT would be hard to acquire under his care or - in the very least - awkward.
I’ve looked at Plume and FolxHealth, which say they take my insurance, but I’m dubious. I feel like it’ll be a bait and switch. They’ll take my insurance, but I won’t actually be covered and I’ll end up paying an arm and a leg for boobs.
Anyone else have United Healthcare and have navigated HRT. I pay a decent amount for medical coverage under a PPO (PPOs tend to have larger networks). I would have thought HRT was easy to acquire since it’s - essentially - a cheap medicine. But I’m running into road blocks early on that are making it difficult to figure out what to do. Should I just go through a primary care physician? Just make another appointment with Doctors on Demand? Can I just jump to FolxHealth or Plume? Is requesting Gender Affirming Care via Planned Parenthood the wrong way to go about this?
I hate insurance.
diy is not as sketchy as it sounds, you just have to do some research and order your meds. its basically just t blockers and over the counter estrogen that cis women going through menopause take
heres a guide if you do exhaust your other options: https://diyhrt.wiki/
Which State you’re in and, if you got the insurance from work, which state your employer is located in also matter. Some blue states require insurance provides to cover hrt and various other gender affirming treatment.
Firstly, if it’s at all an option, consider moving to a less transphobic country. Not just for care-coverage, but for your safety in general.
Secondly I’d say that DIY-HRT is far less sketchy than people make it out to be. The fact of the matter is that, especially if you can get blood-tests, it’s not too hard to interpret the results and that many of the side-effects that everyone fear-mongers about aren’t even applicable, because they are for example only if you take blockers-only or historically used horse-piss-E instead of bio-identical E, which is what everyone uses these days…
If you can get HRT though the medical system that’s good, but don’t be afraid of DIY-ing!
+1 for DIY, it’s also nice to be taking estradiol enanthate as an ester (which you can buy DIY) rather than estradiol valerate (which is about all I can get by Rx in the U.S., the estradiol cypionate I can get is not potent enough).
