{"id":38362,"date":"2025-08-20T16:14:39","date_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:14:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/?p=38362"},"modified":"2025-08-20T16:14:39","modified_gmt":"2025-08-20T21:14:39","slug":"gender-affirming-care-wont-be-covered-for-federal-employees-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/2025\/08\/20\/gender-affirming-care-wont-be-covered-for-federal-employees-in-2026\/","title":{"rendered":"Gender-affirming care won\u2019t be covered for federal employees in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Stat &#8211; Starting next year, insurance companies providing coverage to federal employees will be prohibited from paying for gender-affirming care for trans people of any age, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dropbox.com\/scl\/fi\/r96z8xmoo7h0lcs88mkp7\/CL-2025-01b-Chemical-and-Surgical-Sex-Trait-Modification-Services-for-Plan-Year-2026-Proposals.pdf?rlkey=zmtuciw6inuzwzofybtajozff&amp;e=5&amp;st=lkha8q6h&amp;dl=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">letter<\/a>\u00a0sent to carriers on Friday from the Office of Personnel Management. It\u2019s the latest in a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2025\/08\/08\/health-news-cdc-flu-shot-navajo\/\">torrent<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/2025\/07\/09\/doj-issues-subpoenas-related-to-gender-affirming-care\/\">decisions<\/a>\u00a0by the Trump administration that restrict gender-affirming care for trans people across the country.<\/p>\n<p>There are nearly 14,000 trans federal employees in the U.S. according to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/Federal-Workforce-Reduction-Jan-2025.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Williams Institute<\/a>. The directive, which will likely be challenged in court, will also affect any trans family members of federal workers also covered by a federal plan, including Postal Service employees.<\/p>\n<p>The letter specifically calls out gender-affirming hormones and surgery, clarifying that counseling services for gender dysphoria should still be covered, including controversial \u201cfaith-based counseling,\u201d which can resemble\u00a0conversion therapy. (The letter says the therapy must come from a licensed medical provider, but there\u2019s some critical context needed here: This fall, the Supreme Court will hear a case in which a licensed therapist in Colorado is challenging the state\u2019s law prohibiting licensed mental health professionals from engaging in conversion therapy, arguing that she should be allowed to do so based on her religious beliefs.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/PEN-NEWS.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-29060 size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/PEN-NEWS-300x176.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"176\" srcset=\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/PEN-NEWS-300x176.jpg 300w, https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/07\/PEN-NEWS.jpg 478w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Stat &#8211; Starting next year, insurance companies providing coverage to federal employees will be prohibited from paying for gender-affirming care for trans people of any age, according to a letter\u00a0sent to carriers on Friday from the Office of Personnel Management. It\u2019s the latest in a\u00a0torrent\u00a0of\u00a0decisions\u00a0by the Trump administration that restrict gender-affirming care for trans people [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":29060,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking","last_archivepost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38362"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38362\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38363,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38362\/revisions\/38363"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}