Friday, February 25, 2011

[Peckers_Pics] Muscle Wars, PICS; Feb 26, 2011-Safe PICS For All Ages



Muscle Wars, PICS; Feb 26, 2011
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Transgender Surgery Covered By Growing Number Of U.S. Companies
 
LISA LEFF - 02/21/11 - AP 

SAN FRANCISCO — When Gina Duncan decided to undergo the medical treatment that would make her a woman, she had plenty to fear. The reactions of her children, her professional colleagues and friends. How her body would respond to hours on the operating table. If, at the end of it, she would look female enough so strangers wouldn't gawk.

What the Orlando mortgage banker didn't have to be anxious about was how she would pay for two of her surgeries. Her employer of 10 years, Wells Fargo, included breast augmentation and genital reconstruction as coverable expenses under its employee health plan. Duncan was told the San Francisco-based bank already had had 16 other employees transition to new genders and assigned a benefits specialist to walk her through the process.

"They had a template in place, and it was surprisingly supporting and mentally encouraging," said Duncan, 55, who four years later still works for Wells Fargo. "So much of what I'd heard involved people who ended up losing their job, losing their family, losing their friends, becoming destitute."

With little fanfare, more and more large corporations, including Coca-Cola, Campbell Soup and Walt Disney, have expanded their insurance coverage to meet the needs of transgender workers. The trend follows a concerted push by transgender rights advocates to get employers and insurers to see sex reassignment the way the American Medical Association does – as a medically indicated rather than an optional procedure.

"We understand people simply get appendicitis, and it is something our community deals with through insurance," said Andre Wilson, who counsels companies on transgender issues as a senior consultant with San Francisco-based Jamison Green & Associates. "That's what we need to understand about transsexualism. Not everybody will be diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder, and in fact, few people will be. But the people who are diagnosed with it really need treatment."

Among the corporations providing transgender-inclusive health benefits are some leading Wall Street and Main Street brands.

American Express, Kraft Foods, AT&T, Yahoo!, Eastman Kodak, Sears, Morgan Stanley, Price Waterhouse, General Motors and State Farm are among 85 large businesses and law firms that cover the cost of at least one surgery, according to a 2010 survey by the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights group.

The number is expected to spike this year, when HRC adds availability of surgery-inclusive medical benefits for transgender employees or transgender dependents to the criteria in its annual corporate diversity report card.

To maintain the coveted 100 percent rating when the next Corporate Equality Index is published in the fall, companies will have to offer at least one insurance plan that covers at least $75,000 worth of surgery and other treatments recommended by a patient's doctor.

"A lot of people are pretty surprised that alongside the cosmetic and experimental treatments that are excluded from mainstream plans, you can see very broad exclusions related to transgender care," said Deena Fidas, associate director of HRC's Workplace Project. "In raising the bar...we are addressing the root cause of the problem."

Stephanie Battaglino, an assistant vice president at New York Life Insurance, has been working with a senior executive at her company to add transgender health benefits to the employee insurance plan. Battaglino, 52, started her transition five years ago, becoming the first New York Life employee to do so openly. To finance her surgeries, which were on a list of procedures not covered by insurance, she borrowed from her 401(k) account.

"I've often said to friends, `My transition at work went really, really smoothly, and if I had to do it again, the only thing I would change would be if I had my surgery covered,'" she said. "To know it was covered and completely reimbursed would have cast everything in a much different light."

New York Life has been open to the changes and expects to have the expanded coverage in place soon, Battaglino said. But that doesn't mean the learning curve has been easy to negotiate.

The company initially was uncomfortable agreeing to $75,000 of allowable coverage, she said. But she said that concern was alleviated when it was explained that only two or three employees would likely need the benefits.

"The big misconception is we are going to go broke and all these transgender people are going to come out of the woodwork asking for gender reassignment surgery," she said.

Once she was diagnosed and decided to seek treatment two years ago, Sara Schnorr, a partner in the Boston law firm of Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, "poked around" to see if another firm already paid for sex reassignment as part of its group health insurance.

"When you go to work every day, if you are gay or lesbian, you look no different," Schnorr said. "But if you are transgender, you have to make some pretty big changes to your physical appearance. It's not really like you can be stealth about it."

Schnorr decided to stay with the firm where she had worked for 31 years and to come out to her partners. Before she went on leave for her first surgery, which would feminize her facial features, they agreed to secure a rider to the firm's insurance policy that would allow her to be reimbursed for at least genital reconstruction and breast augmentation.

"I was ecstatic," she said. "For me, this is yet another example of how human this law firm is in wanting to take care of its employees."

Some businesses see covering the cost of transgender surgery as not only an important human resources statement, but good business sense.

"Wells Fargo elected to offer this benefit to be competitive as an employer and also to support our comprehensive corporate commitment to diversity," company spokesman Mary Eshet said.

Joanne Herman, the author of "Transgender Explained For Those Who Are Not," said both corporate America and insurers need to understand that genital surgery is not the be-all and end-all in making a person's appearance match the way he or she feels inside.

For men becoming women, undergoing facial reconstruction may be even more important because it will affect how they are perceived and treated in public, Herman said. The same is true for female-to-male transsexuals and breast surgery. Yet standard insurance plans typically dismiss both as cosmetic, even though people with untreated Gender Identity Disorder are at high risk of suicide and those who get treatment become better workers.

"If you are transsexual, living as anything other than that is a very bleak experience. It's amazing how much happier I am, how much more productive, social and involved I am as Joanne," she said.
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And Now, Our War of the Fittest!

This group is called "Peckers Pics."  The English -  slang definition of "pecker" is to pluck at the truth. Therefore, we peck at items such as Gay Men's Health, Male Fitness, Gay (LGBT) Politics & Issues.  In this section you may peck at each photo in order to decide the winner of the "war of the fittest!"  Whereas, you should select the guy that may inspire you to exercise and "get fit!"   Warning: This may stoke you!
 
Your participation in discussion of health / news articles - appearing in this message is greatly appreciated.
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You Decide!
Los Angeles, CA - Club Papi Anniversary Party Feb 24, 2011
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Los Angeles, CA - Club Papi Anniversary Party Feb 24, 2011
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Los Angeles, CA - Club Papi Anniversary Party Feb 24, 2011
Newt Gingrich: Obama Could Be Impeached Over Gay Marriage Reversal
By Paul Bedard / Feb 25, 2011 / U.S. News & World Report

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who plans within two weeks to announce if he will run for president, said today that if President Obama doesn't change his mind and order his Justice Department to enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, Republicans in Congress should strike back and even consider impeachment proceedings.

"I believe the House Republicans next week should pass a resolution instructing the president to enforce the law and to obey his own constitutional oath, and they should say if he fails to do so that they will zero out [defund] the office of attorney general and take other steps as necessary until the president agrees to do his job," said Gingrich. "His job is to enforce the rule of law and for us to start replacing the rule of law with the rule of Obama is a very dangerous precedent."

He didn't call for immediate impeachment hearings, but didn't rule them out if Obama balks at any congressional demands to enforce the law.

[Update: A Gingrich spokesman writes to say that Gingrich did not raise the impeachment issue himself. "Gingrich never raised impeachment nor did he say we were in a constitutional crisis," the Gingrich spokesman says. "His remarks, as can be seen in the video, were to illustrate the hypocrisy of the media and the left. He explicitly says that Obama did not intend to spark a constitutional crisis but that the president is acting outside of his constitutional role, but that does not mean that there is a constitutional crisis."]

Gingrich made his comments to Newsmax TV which has become the go-to place for potential GOP presidential candidates to make news. Just this week Mike Huckabee visited and Newsmax says that Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty plan to stop by next week.

The president's decision not to enforce the law that protects traditional marriage was a major policy switch and was seen as a bow to the gay community that has pushed hard to win the right to marriage in many states. Gays have been politically active for Obama, though some have been critical of his defense of traditional marriage.

Just today, the president also gave another olive branch to the community, naming the first gay social secretary for the White House. According to the Advocate, a gay journal, Jeremy Bernard has served in several gay organizations and most recently was the assistant to the U.S. ambassador to France.

Gingrich's call for quick GOP reaction to the Justice Department's decision to stop enforcing the marriage act was seen as a bid for the conservative and Tea Party vote, a base he would rely on if he decides to get into the presidential race.

In talking about the president's action, in fact, he raised Sarah Palin's name and suggested that she would be under fire if she ever decided not to enforce a major social law. "Imagine that Governor Palin had become president. Imagine that she had announced that Roe v. Wade in her view was unconstitutional and therefore the United States government would no longer protect anyone's right to have an abortion because she personally had decided it should be changed. The news media would have gone crazy. The New York Times would have demanded her impeachment," said Gingrich.

Gingrich noted that Obama supported the law during the campaign. "He is breaking his word to the American people," Gingrich said. Also, he added, "He swore an oath on the Bible to become president that he would uphold the Constitution and enforce the laws of the United States. He is not a one-person Supreme Court. The idea that we now have the rule of Obama instead of the rule of law should frighten everybody. The fact that the left likes the policy is allowing them to ignore the fact that this is a very unconstitutional act," Gingrich said.
"Every gay and lesbian person who has been lucky enough to survive the turmoil of growing up is a survivor. Survivors always have an obligation to those who will face the same challenges."
....Jake
 
 
Alert: NEW Episode of "Roommates, Ryan takes on John" - Episode 116, By Clay  (Continuing Wrestling fiction series). Your "PUBLIC" Yahoo Profile must include "PUBLIC" Age, Gender, Location - before you apply for membership @ http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BearhugSubmission_/join
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


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"Every gay and lesbian person who has been lucky enough to survive the turmoil of growing up is a survivor. Survivors always have an obligation to those who will face the same challenges."

...Jake (Moderator)



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