Trans-Justice Crowd Sets Sights On Republican State Treasurer

RALEIGH – This is exactly why Republicans, or anyone concerned with fiscal responsibility of state government, should be thankful that Republican Dale Folwell was elected to State Treasurer in 2016.

When Folwell was merely Treasurer-elect, the State Health Plan Board of Trustees voted to add plan coverage for gender dysphoria conditions. It meant that state employees or their children wold be covered under the plan for elective treatments and surgeries related to their gender confusion.

Hormone therapy for a teacher’s 14 year old daughter to halt pubescent changes that would interrupt her living as a boy? Covered. Sex reassignment surgery for the state employee? Covered. (The woke crowd calls this ‘gender confirmation’ surgery, but we don’t peddle in make believe.)

As soon as Folwell assumed office, and his leadership post of the SHP board, they reversed this decision so that taxpayers were not on the hook for the medical procedures that turn Johnny into Sally.

As you can imagine, the LGBT crowd is indignant, and now they are celebrating a board member that thinks you, the taxpayer, SHOULD cover the bills for facilitating a mentally straining delusion that leads to some of the highest suicide rates out there. Surprise! She’s a Roy Cooper appointee.

“Now, at least one member of the health plan’s board of trustees — the only one other than state treasurer Dale Folwell yet to respond to Policy Watch inquiries — is speaking out on the issue and urging a change.

“The core issue for me is that we have a group of State Health Plan members who have reached out to us for help,” said Kim Hargett in an interview with Policy Watch. “The goal of the state health plan is to help our members. At this point, it warrants looking for ways to help them.”

Folwell, a conservative Republican and former state lawmaker, is chairman of the board by virtue of his office. Gov. Cooper’s state budget director, Charlie Perusse, is also an ex officio member. The other members are all appointed by Folwell or the General Assembly, whose GOP majority continues to contend that transgender identity does not exist, but is the result of improperly treated mental illness.

That position is at odds with the view of the mainstream medical community, from the doctors who actually work with transgender patients to the American Medical Association and American Psychiatric Association. The APA recognizes gender dysphoria not as a mental illness but as “a conflict between a person’s physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify.””

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