There’s easier ways to make a buck than surgery, but it probably plays into a larger strategy.

For one, they’d rather get you hooked on pills which have a higher ROI and are easier to sell at scale. So, keep doing those puberty blockers for 10 years before you’re old enough for surgery, then keep guzzling artificial hormones etc for the rest of your life after.

Even still, I think we’re talking about small enough numbers of people that it’s not going to motivate a whole lot of effort just to get those patients’ money. But as a precedent for forcing insurance companies and/or the government to spend millions of dollars per patient, it’s a good long term play. Why not spend that much per patient on weight loss pills, ADHD medication, etc?

I guess if you’re going to have the death penalty, that’s as good if a way to go as any; but I don’t think the states that don’t have the death penalty should bring it back.

While there’s plenty of people who pretty obviously deserve it, there’s too high of a possibility of wrongfully executing somebody who was innocent. Better to just avoid the risk.

I went looking for an instance that wasn’t a left wing echo chamber after a mod on one of the big instances started getting power-crazy in a thread about the affirmative action SCOTUS ruling.

Content here is a little further right than I’m usually looking for, but I don’t have to tiptoe around on eggshells fearing a ban, and that’s what matters.