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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

CO Insurers Step Up to Cover Transgender Citizens

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Thursday, September 26, 2013   

DENVER - As eligible Coloradans prepare to begin enrolling in the Health Insurance Marketplace next Tuesday, a second insurer - Kaiser Permanente - announced this week that it will cover health services for transgender citizens. The company joins Colorado HealthOP, a nonprofit cooperative health insurance plan, that announced similar coverage earlier this month.

Until now, transgender people have had a difficult time finding health coverage. Colorado will be one of the first states to have a health insurer selling plans that do not exclude transgender people, said Courtney Gray, Transgender Programs coordinator, GLBT Community Center of Colorado.

"If you're being denied access to health care altogether, based on who you are - when you're at your most down and out and when you're needing care - to be discriminated against at that point is devastating," Gray said.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, the transgender population has a 41 percent suicide rate, compared with less than 2 percent for the general population. The GLBT Community Center of Colorado is serving as an assistance site to the GLBT community to sign people up for health coverage under Connect for Health Colorado.

Gray, who is transgender, said finding health care was not easy, until she started working at the Center.

"Several years ago, on the individual market, I applied to every single health insurance company in the state of Colorado. I didn't qualify for low income, and every other health insurance company - when they found out I was transgender - decided not to cover me at all."

Earlier this year, the Colorado Division of Insurance issued a bulletin that Colorado anti-discrimination law does apply to health insurance. Therefore, plans must cover the same services for transgender people as they would for others. Ultimately, because of that, all health insurers must offer coverage for the transgender population, but only two have done so up to this point.

Assistance is available by phone at 303-951-5281, ext. 118, or by email at healthcareguide@glbtcolorado.org.




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