South America is quickly becoming the most trans friendly continent on our planet.Argentina just passed a groundbreaking Gender Identity Law and now their next door neighbors in Chile have made some moves that benefit their trans population.Chile will soon cover sex reassignment surgeries under its public health plan in order to allow citizens of limited means to “recover their true sexual identity,” Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.

Brazil and Cuba are the other nations in Latin America that offer SRS as part of their national health plans to their citizens. Until now SRS operations were only offered in private clinics at a cost of $20,000 to $30,000 but will now be performed in public hospitals in the capital of Santiago and the cities of Concepcion and Valparaiso, the health minister said late Thursday. Before the reforms, “a poor person had no possibility of completing the process of femininization or masculinization,” Rolando Jimenez, head of the Movement for Homosexual Integration and Liberation (Movilh), told AFP. The cost for SRS covered by the national health plan will now depend on the patient’s income bracket, with the poorest citizens able to get the operations for free.

Chile also enacted other reforms and measures to help prevent discrimination aimed at its TBLG population.  The health ministry ruled that blood banks cannot refuse donors based on sexual orientation and that hospitalized transsexual patients can and should room with patients of their desired gender.

If a nation of 17 million people can do this, what holding up the United States from doing so?

cr0ss-posted from Transgriot