Donnie Collins, a 19-year-old transgender student from Emerson College, will receive coverage by the college's insurance carrier, Aetna, for his 'top surgery' or 'breast removal' operation in May.
Aetna, the health insurance provider, had earlier refused his request to cover his operations, which cost more than $40,000. Collins, a visual and media arts major was born a female but has identified himself as a male since prep school.
Later, the college interfered on his behalf and clarified with Atena that Emerson's student insurance policy features breast-removal surgery for transgender men who meet certain criteria.
They discovered that the policy language had accidently not been updated by Aetna on their internal documents, which led to the rejection of coverage.
Once the inaccuracies in internal documentation were corrected and updated, Aetna also agreed to pay for the hormone therapy, which is the first step undertaken in gender transition.
However, the health insurance will cover only 80 percent of the cost, meaning, Collins will still be responsible for his co-pay, travel and care expenses, which will cost around $2,000.
Last month, Feb.9, Emerson's Phi Alpha Tau, a professional communicative arts fraternity, heard about the insurance company's refusal to pay for his sex reassignment surgery.
The fraternity then launched an online campaign to collect sufficient funds. Overall, they collected around $20,000 for the surgery.
"This is amazing, because it means that of all the money we've raised, I'm only going to need to use about $2,000 for my co-pay and travel and care expenses," Collins told Boston. "Meaning that $18,000, which is now our excess amount of fund-raised money, can go to the Jim Collins Foundation, the organization that we've pledged it to. We can help people that need this money a lot more than I do."
For the past three years, Collins has been paying out of his own pocket for his hormone therapy as his mother's insurance policy did not cover the costs.
