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The Third Chamber of the Supreme Court today ordered, by three votes to two, that the Isapre Colmena Golden Cross provide coverage for the body readjustment surgeries of a 54-year-old transsexual woman, who required a feminizing genitoplasty and a body and facial reconstruction feminizing.
The decision had the affirmative votes of the ministers Ángela Vivanco, Sergio Muñoz and the member lawyer, Álvaro Quintanilla. Against, the Minister María Angélica Repetto and the member lawyer Ricardo Abuauad demonstrated.
The isapre had justified her refusal in that “gender identity does not constitute a disease”Therefore, “a procedure of an aesthetic nature, which would not comply with the parameters established by the Ministry of Health,” would not fit within the coverage possibilities.
However, the ruling of the highest court established that unlike what was expressed by the health pension institution, sexual reassignment surgeries areor constitute an aesthetic necessity for beautification purposes, but are “an intervention, which in legal terms, must be considered relevant and a reflection, on the one hand, of the State’s duty to guarantee and ensure non-discrimination against transsexuals and, on the other, the exercise that they make the fundamental rights of equality before the law and the protection of health ”.
Court ruling is historic for Movilh
In addition, the Justice adds in the text that “the refusal of the appealed Isapre to provide the appellant with the requested coverage for the performance of feminizing genitoplasty surgeries and that of breast implants ordered by the treating doctors, lacks reasonableness”.
Then it specifies that “the exegesis relative to the norms that refer to constitutional guarantees must always be interpreted for the benefit of the people whose health is affected, even more so if it is borne in mind that their cost does not alter the conditions agreed upon regarding the health benefits in the respective contract “
For the head of human rights at Movilh, Ramón Gómez, who advised the affected party, the Supreme Court’s decision constitutes “a historic ruling, which reinforces a similar one that we won in the Supreme Court in March 2020 against Isapre herself, which considered transsexuality as a disease. After we won it, they wanted in this second case to say that now because it was not a disease, then they could not afford the body change surgeries, all of which shows the opportunism and transphobia of this Isapre, which was finally overcome for the benefit of human dignity “.
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