How health insurance affects patients: That means the transgender community too 16 Shares Coming into Columbia University as a pre-med first-year student, I expected to be studying anatomy, biology, psychology, and many other subjects. I would have never thought that I would encounter gender and sexuality studies. Interestingly, this led to my discovery of a very pressing issue that not only affects the transgender community, but potentially many other people who rely on health insurance, like me. In recent years, health insurances have become more restrictive by placing more regulations on who can be covered and for what treatments. In light of this, there seems to be an increasing need for medical professionals to formulate diagnosis criteria that help patients by enabling insurance coverage for their treatment. However, this act made by many medical professionals today in good faith to benefit the patients can have the opposite effect and harm patients in adverse ways. A clear example of this issue is how greatly the classification of gender dysphoria in the DSM, the national diagnostic manual for psychiatry, has affected the transgender community.