To which I say bullshit.  Why is this being funded out of Medicaid?

We have people complaining that we cannot provide universal health care, but then you see that $50-60K a person sex change surgeries are paid for on the public dole, and you honestly do not see a connection?

Maybe if we made our health care system deal with essentials, there would be more to go around.

Yes, I am saying that gender reassignment is a voluntary and elective surgery, not an essential necessity.

Deal with it.

State tries to rule out aid for sex-change surgery

Medicaid officials plan to rewrite regulations to make it clear the state will no longer cover sex-change operations.

But before the new regulations are in place, the state will likely have to pay for more surgeries.

Lovely.

In a pair of rulings issued last month, a state appeals board ordered Medicaid to pay for two people to travel out of state to undergo sex-change operations. The state estimates the procedures, also known as sex-reassignment surgery, will cost $50,000 to $60,000 each.

How many immunization clinics would that fund?

"This is very controversial and in need of clarity," said state Medicaid director Doug Porter. "We’ve decided to make it real crystal clear that it’s not a covered service."

But Porter said the state plans to continue covering other services — such as hormone treatment and psychotherapy — for people diagnosed with gender-identity disorders. State officials argue that those treatments are just as effective as surgery but are less risky and far less expensive.

"We understand this is a very real condition for some people," Porter said. "We just think psychotherapy and hormone treatment is a better way to go."

Many transgender people and medical experts who treat gender-identity disorders disagree. In some cases, they argue, surgery is the only effective treatment.

"It’s the only thing that repairs our mental health and makes us feel whole and able to get back on track," said Lee, one of the two people who won on appeal last month. Lee is her middle name; she requested that her full name not be published.

I am way too busy today to make a pretty special links post, so feel free to use this for the weekend open trackbacks.

Thanks, and everyone have a great weekend.

Ok, I dont like her. I disagree with her politics, motives and her anti semitism.

But I certainly don’t wish her ill health.

Drudge is reporting she was hospitalized for exhaustion and dehydration. 

Sheehan Treated for Dehydration in Texas

Anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan was hospitalized Friday evening for dehydration and exhaustion after fasting for more than a month and protesting earlier this week in 100-degree weather, friends and relatives said.

Sheehan was listed in stable condition at Providence Health Center in Waco. Brenda Mauk, a nursing supervisor, declined to release additional information.

Sheehan, 49, was hospitalized after friends picked her up Friday afternoon at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, where she arrived after spending several days in Seattle at the Veterans for Peace convention, said friend Tiffany Burns.

Sheehan, who has been on a liquid diet as part of the nationwide "Troops Home Fast" hunger strike, had been treated and released from a Seattle emergency room Thursday night. On doctors orders, she ate for the first time in about 37 days, Burns said.

Sheehan also underwent additional tests for uterine bleeding, her sister Dede Miller said.

Sheehan was to spend Friday night in the Waco hospital but planned to attend some war protest activities Saturday at the 5-acre lot she bought last month in Crawford, President Bush’s adopted hometown, about 20 miles from Waco.

Sheehan kicked off her summer war protest Sunday, the one-year anniversary of her first anti-war demonstration in Crawford that attracted more than 10,000 people over 26 days.

"She’s in good spirits, but she’s sad she can’t be at Camp Casey," Burns told The Associated Press, referring to the campsite named for her soldier son Casey who was killed in Iraq in 2004.

Well anyone with moderate amount of common sense knows that fasting is dangerous.  But the reports of her fasting (see Michelle Malkins site…) really left me wondering what she was thinking.