Starbucks Will Offer Extensive Health Care for Transgender Employees

Starbucks announced this week that it will now offer extensive health care benefits for transgender employees, including gender-affirming cosmetic procedures. The company has covered gender reassignment surgery since 2012 and will now also cover facial feminization, breast reduction and augmentation, hair transplants and voice therapy.

"Starbucks was not afraid to ask all the right questions and demand that people get the best possible care," Jamison Green, who worked with Starbucks on behalf of World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), told Pink News. "We produced a list of the most crucial benefits and those that are deemed problematic to insurance companies, such as facial feminization and electrolysis."

"The approach was driven not just by the company's desire to provide truly inclusive coverage, and by powerful conversations with transgender partners about how those benefits would allow them to truly be who they are," Starbucks vice president of benefits Ron Crawford said in a statement. "You have to think of it from an equity perspective."