The transgender community is praising the Health and Human Service (HHS) agency for extending the ban on discrimination against transgender people under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but don't confuse it with banning discrimination for health insurance coverage.
The HHS agency did not ban exclusions for transgender health care, especially medically approved and required surgery, aka Sex Reassignment Surgery (SRS), only that the companies can't reject a transgender person or deny claims under the plans.
The health insurance plans overseen and/or managed by the federal government under the ACA, under Medicare and under the Federal Employees Health Benefit (FEHB) plans still exclude coverage for "sex transformation", including and explicitly SRS.
While top 500 companies, some small companies and business, universities, organization and states cover transition healthcare including SRS, the federal government does not under all their health insurance programs.
Banning discrimination of people isn't banning discrimination of coverage. It's time the HHS and Office of Personel Management (OPM) fix the latter and add appropriate coverage for insurers under their programs.
HHS is doing a review for Medicare but not the ACA or is OPM doing it for the FEHB. Those need to be challenged since the President has directed them to change the policy for inclusion of people and healthcare.
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