My insurance sucks. I’ve just been denied coverage for:
- Therapy (I appealed that)
- Dental work (out of network even though they “take my insurance”)
- Planned Parenthood gender affirming care meeting
Furthermore, my doctor’s appointment with Doctor’s on Demand was cancelled with no explanation (I was going to go with a primary care physician to ask some questions about HRT).
United Healthcare sucks and I need help. I’ve heard of DIY HRT but it sounds sketchy to me. I’m willing to get there, but I’d like to exhaust all possibilities before I go down that path. I picked Planned Parenthood because they seem like a safe space. My current primary care physician is sort of conservative coded. He made some comments at our last appointment that made me feel like HRT would be hard to acquire under his care or - in the very least - awkward.
I’ve looked at Plume and FolxHealth, which say they take my insurance, but I’m dubious. I feel like it’ll be a bait and switch. They’ll take my insurance, but I won’t actually be covered and I’ll end up paying an arm and a leg for boobs.
Anyone else have United Healthcare and have navigated HRT. I pay a decent amount for medical coverage under a PPO (PPOs tend to have larger networks). I would have thought HRT was easy to acquire since it’s - essentially - a cheap medicine. But I’m running into road blocks early on that are making it difficult to figure out what to do. Should I just go through a primary care physician? Just make another appointment with Doctors on Demand? Can I just jump to FolxHealth or Plume? Is requesting Gender Affirming Care via Planned Parenthood the wrong way to go about this?
I hate insurance.
(◠‿◕)
Firstly, if it’s at all an option, consider moving to a less transphobic country. Not just for care-coverage, but for your safety in general.
Secondly I’d say that DIY-HRT is far less sketchy than people make it out to be. The fact of the matter is that, especially if you can get blood-tests, it’s not too hard to interpret the results and that many of the side-effects that everyone fear-mongers about aren’t even applicable, because they are for example only if you take blockers-only or historically used horse-piss-E instead of bio-identical E, which is what everyone uses these days…
If you can get HRT though the medical system that’s good, but don’t be afraid of DIY-ing!
+1 for DIY, it’s also nice to be taking estradiol enanthate as an ester (which you can buy DIY) rather than estradiol valerate (which is about all I can get by Rx in the U.S., the estradiol cypionate I can get is not potent enough).
Are you comfortable describing where you source your Estradiol Enanthate and anti-androgens? I am looking at Open Gate Labs since they ship from the US and I live in the US. But I can’t find any sources that are selling Bicalutamide. Each seller is out of stock or saying they aren’t shipping due to the Trump tariffs. I don’t really want to go on Spiro since they say it’s weaker and then the side effects of Cyproterone acetate scare the heck out of me (e.g., benign brain tumors).
I would just do monotherapy, tbh - I don’t think it’s uncommon for DIY folks to do monotherapy (probably for this reason, anti-androgens are probably harder to get on the grey & black markets), and while I started with bica at first, I switched to monotherapy when bica was useless for biochemical dysphoria / mood impacts of T. I needed the T to be suppressed, and sufficient E was the solution to that.
Also, I don’t do DIY, so I can’t help you with sourcing - but I bet that Matrix room would have thoughts 😁
Thanks for your help! I ended up picking monotherapy and going on the matrix subreddit to double check my plans for DIY HRT.
sounds like a solid plan, I can’t wait to hear how it goes 💗
Let me know if you end up with any questions, feel free to ping me on Matrix (
@dandelion:chat.blahaj.zone) or DM me here on Lemmy!
diy is not as sketchy as it sounds, you just have to do some research and order your meds. its basically just t blockers and over the counter estrogen that cis women going through menopause take
heres a guide if you do exhaust your other options: https://diyhrt.wiki/
Thanks for the guide. It sounds like it’s mostly a cost based issue then? The DIY route seems a bit more expensive than insurance, but it’s fairly reasonable.
How do you handle injections? I feel like it’d be super hard to put a needle in me. I’ve never done something like that before.
Edit I watched a video on how to do it. Doesn’t actually look too bad. I hate needles, but for some reason the 45deg. angle and pinching the skin made it seem less daunting.
You can come ask questions on the matrix if you want! Lots of people there with experience! (we have a HRT room)
I wrote a guide here on lemmy a while ago: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/22251406
And here are more links on DIY: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/19393848
Generally doing DIY should be pretty cheap if you go for monotherapy by doing injections
I can’t join the Matrix server. When I try registering with the server
chat.blahaj.zoneandblahaj-20250508I just get a 500 Internal Server Error response from the server. I tried different username/password combinations in case there was an issue with special characters, but nothing seemed to change. Instead I registered with matrix.org and was able to get accepted. I’m learning how to use Matrix, but I’m getting the hang of it a bit. I’ll try and find the HRT room :)Oh? I’ve seen someone else have issues as well. Will bring it up with Ada.
I don’t currently recommend making matrix.org accounts as they don’t prioritize protecting their users from spam, but there are ways to deal with the spam by using certain clients and adding ban lists. Users with chat.blahaj.zone accounts get spam removed automatically thanks to Kaity and Ada.
Ok, fixed. Our spam protection was interfering with it.
That was quick <3
Thanks. Kaity will look in to it and see what’s going on
Which State you’re in and, if you got the insurance from work, which state your employer is located in also matter. Some blue states require insurance provides to cover hrt and various other gender affirming treatment.
I have UHC and went through planned parenthood but im just paying out of pocket. They counted as in network so i got some money off. This isnt really helpful i just wanted to say i also hate it
A friend works for UHC and she is trans and gets hrt covered. She says the best thing you can do is call the number on the back of your card and find out exactly what is covered and where. Last year she was quoted 90 bucks outta pocket for breast augmentation, not sure where that stands now but she is gonna call again soon to verify.
Good luck!
That’s fair. I can try giving them a call, but most of my experience on UHC phone trees end up frustrating and unhelpful.
