Apparently it’s been over a month and a half since we reached internal consensus on this, but I still haven’t made any progress on this subject other than asking at a local support group: Unfortunately no-one there seems to care much about this subject (only SFS/SRS for some reason), so it wasn’t much help.
What I want to know is: How do you actually find a surgeon to perform this kind of procedure? And how do you decide if it turns out there are multiple practical options? Is it worth leaving the region to go by plane (post-surgery train ride sounds a lot nicer than flying…)?
Details: We’re located in the EU and the public health insurance carriers don’t cover it.* We have the money to pay for this kind of procedure privately, but it would be better not to put too much stress on our savings as our income isn’t that great. This also means there is no list of “in network” surgeons (that’s a USian concept, I think?) to consult. We’ve been on HRT for over a year and a half, still weigh less than 90kgs and are AMAB and unlikely to be inter (that checks all the usual boxes, I think).
Any resources or personal stories would be appreciated as well.
* In fact, they were apparently recently sued into at least covering facial lasing, but everything trans-related is a default-no with public insurance unless overruled in court. In theory one could perform the procedure in Denmark (where it is covered), get the SS2 form rejected by the public health insurance around here, then spend the next couple of years in court with them though.
Thanks! Although I wanted to note (even if it might be fine print to many) that it isn’t the EU or the public health insurance providers being transphobic: this really is on the state government refusing to regulate anything for who-knows-how-long. Other EU member states (ie: Denmark) apparently do this a lot better. (The health insurance providers could definitely be nicer about it too, but they do have a mandate to not just hand out money to anyone without legal basis.)