Grindr to cover gender reassignment surgery for workers

Grindr, the dating app aimed at the gay and lesbian community, now offers health coverage for workers undergoing gender reassignment surgery.

After recently improving its employee benefits, the company now also covers hormone and voice therapy; in-flight and hotel stays if surgery is out of town; and any costs for legal documents for employees who change their name as part of their gender transition.

The new health benefits offer a “more holistic and inclusive” list of options for trans, non-binary, non-gender employees, Heidi Schriefer, Grindr’s vice president of people, told CBS MoneyWatch.

“We look forward to working with other companies to help them follow suit,” he said. “That’s the decent thing to do, and it should end there.”

The benefits, which went into effect in mid-April, affect Grindr’s 150 full-time employees. The company was launched in 2009 and has approximately 12 million users.

Gender reassignment surgery costs thousands of dollars and can be more expensive depending on whether the procedure focuses on the upper or lower half of the body. An estimate lists male-to-female transitional surgery at more than $ 25,000. Phalloplasty could cost more than $ 150,000, according to CreditCards.com.

Other companies, such as Starbucks, IBM and Kaiser Permanente, also cover gender reassignment surgery in their health plans. Today, however, this coverage remains a rarity among corporations: Only 6% of U.S. companies pay for gender-based surgery surgery for employees, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Grindr’s product manager Amy Jie helped create the new benefits after having a humiliating transition experience while being covered by a different employer’s health plan, Time magazine reported. Jie said he had to send letters to nearly 30 psychiatrists to get the letters needed for insurance coverage to his former employer.

“It made me feel like my problems weren’t the ones that mattered to society,” Jie told TIME. “It is this ritual humiliation and conditioned care that makes such a high percentage of queer people avoid seeking health care.”