Welcome to Trans Tuesday! Some final results from the largest-ever survey of trans people have finally been tabulated and released, so let’s talk about THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS, part 3! This week is all about our experiences with healthcare providers. Spoilers: there’s problems!
I’ve previously covered this survey, and how important it was to have one not just on this scale, but run and administered by trans people. The survey was so large that we’re only now, midway through 2025, getting some final results from it, three years after it was conducted.
We first got a glimpse of the data contained in this survey in 2024, when the early insights were released. I covered those in detail, so you may want to check out THE 2022 US TRANS SURVEY RESULTS part 1 and part 2 before reading this essay.
The newly released data is titled “Health and Wellbeing,” which leads me to believe there will be further detailed results released in other categories later on. But there’s a wealth of info in here to talk about, so let’s get into it. It’s over a hundred pages long, so I can’t cover all of it, but I’ll try to highlight some of what I think is the most important.
If you want to read the results yourself, which includes detailed breakdowns of statistics by race and age and gender and transition status, you can do so here.
I’m just going to be talking about and trying to parse some of this data to make it more easily digestible, but do have a look if you’d like to read through it yourself.
There were over ninety-two thousand responses, and while they did include those from 16 and 17 year-olds, this particular report only includes data from those 18 and older.
Let’s go!
- US Trans Survey respondents reported worse overall health compared to the general population: 66% rated their health as “excellent,” “very good,” or “good,” compared to 81% in the general population. 34% reported “fair” or “poor” health, compared to 18% in the general population.
Social and medical transition was associated with better health—67% of respondents who had socially transitioned reported good or better health compared to 61% of those who had not. Further, 70% of respondents who had medically transitioned rated their health as good or better, compared to 58% of respondents who had not medically transitioned.
What this pretty clearly shows is that access to transition care improves our health overall, which is likely partly due from the actual transition medical care, and partly due from transition making so many of us actually care about our bodies (and lives!) and wanting to take better care of ourselves. Which can be really hard to do when you feel trapped inside a waking death (see GENDER DYSPHORIA for more).
Just gonna reiterate not every trans person has dysphoria, and you don’t have to have it to be trans. Do not misconstrue a very difficult thing many of us deal with for a requirement of transness (that’s TRANSMEDICALISM babe).
But then there’s these barriers for many trans people who may want to see a doctor, but don’t:
- 28% of respondents did not see a healthcare provider in the past year due to cost. … 24% of respondents avoided healthcare in the past year due to fear of being mistreated as a trans person.
Basically a quarter of us couldn’t afford it and a quarter of us were afraid of being mistreated because we’re trans. I don’t know what the overlap is there (people who both couldn’t afford it and were afraid to go anyway due to transphobia), but that’s a big, big chunk of us.
- 50% of respondents said all their healthcare providers knew they were transgender… 24% of respondents said none of their providers knew that they were transgender.
Holy shit, a whole lot of us are hiding our transness from at least one (or all) of our healthcare providers. And the only reason to do that is the fear of mistreatment, or of having explicitly trans healthcare on your medical record (meaning it would then have to be stopped if laws outlawed it). For example, I only have access to HRT through my insurance because my doctor gave me a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.
I’ve asked them if they would change it to “unspecified hormone disorder” or what have you, like many good doctors will do, so that if trans HRT is outlawed, mine could continue. They said no. Yay.
- Among respondents who visited a healthcare provider in the past year, nearly three-quarters (73%) said they had at least one healthcare provider that knew they were trans and treated them with respect…
That’s great! 73% is huge! But-
- …nearly half (47%) experienced at least one negative interaction with a healthcare provider.
Oooof. And note that negative interaction with a healthcare provider is because they were trans.
- The most common negative interactions were that healthcare providers used the wrong names or pronouns (37%), respondents had to teach their healthcare provider about trans people to receive appropriate care (18%), and healthcare providers asked unnecessary or invasive questions about the individual’s trans status that were unrelated to the visit (11%).
I’ve personally dealt with the first two of those, and let me tell you… misgendering and deadnaming from your doctors is bad, but having to teach them about advances in trans care, or even basic trans care things, is even worse. Because it is their job. AND YET.
For so much more on this see COMPLETE TRANS HEALTHCARE (or lack thereof), ANECDOTAL TRANS HEALTHCARE, HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY, and DISCRIMINATORY BUREAUCRACY.
And for a detailed instance of my own mistreatment at the hands of healthcare professionals, and how one good doctor who was a PROACTIVE ALLY turned it all around for me, see NO ESCAPE 2: SOME ESCAPE.
- Among respondents that were refused transition-related care, the most common reason was that the provider was not familiar with treating trans people (41%).
But Republicans will tell you doctors are pushing trans care on people to make the big bucks. Never mind that almost half of the doctors we trans people tried to get care from said, “eh, sorry, I don’t know how.”
In the twelve months prior to the survey, for those respondents who had health insurance and experienced difficulty getting transition-related care from them, these were the reasons:
- Only covered some of my transition-related surgical care – 45%
Denied me other transition-related medical care – 23%
Denied me transition-related surgery – 20%
Covers surgery but didn’t have any in-network providers – 17%
Wouldn’t change my records to list current gender – 16%
Wouldn’t change my records to list my current name – 12%
Denied me transition-related hormone therapy – 11%
Denied me gender-specific healthcare because I am trans – 5%
Denied me routine healthcare because I am trans – 3%
Yeah, transition healthcare is big bucks that’s why so many insurers won’t even cover all of it. And some of that is maddening, like… you cover transition surgeries but don’t have any in-network providers?
THEN YOU DO NOT ACTUALLY COVER IT, DO YOU?!
Augh.
The survey notes that these numbers are (generally) an improvement upon the previous survey, conducted in 2015, but that had a much smaller sample of respondents and a different cross-sectional sample of people who took it.
But remember the 2022 survey’s numbers are for trans people’s experiences in 2021.
Where do you think they’re at now, in 2025, with ever more states banning transition care and hospitals and entire providers complying with fascism in advance and discontinuing trans care?
Yikes.
Be sure to come back next week as we get into transition satisfaction, detransitioners, and mental health!
There’s so much more important data to talk about. Don’t miss it.
Tilly Bridges, end transmission.
tillysbridges@gmail.com