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PageOneQ reports that the American Medical Association is calling on health insurers to cooperate with doctors in providing proper care to meet transgender patients’ needs.

Resolutions 114, 115 and 122 were passed by the AMA’s House of Delegates at its annual conference in Chicago, which concludes today. Noting that Gender Identity Disorder is an internationally recognized medical condition, the Delegates highlight the need to combat the emotional pain and physical incongruity associated with gender dysphoria with proper access to mental health services, hormone treatments, and surgical procedures.

The National Center for Transgender Equality has hailed the resolution. “America’s physicians,” said NCTE Executive Director Mara Keisling, “are saying that transgender people, like all others, deserve competent medical care based on what individual doctors and their patients determine is healthiest for each person.”

The AMA asserts that when discriminatory financial barriers are placed between the transgender community and proper health care by dismissing treatments as “cosmetic” or “experimental,” even when covered for other patients with other recognized medical conditions, more expensive problems can develop as a result, such as depression, substance abuse problems, and stress-related illness.

“Doctors and patients, not insurance companies, should be making those choices,” Keisling added. “We are so glad that the AMA has taken a leadership role against the rampant discrimination that transgender people have faced for so many years in receiving appropriate medical care and equitable insurance coverage.”