Trans physician uses life savings to keep clinic open after insurers deny reimbursements
A Louisiana physician said three insurance companies refused to reimburse her for care that she provided after she transitioned and changed her name.
Tiffany Najberg, a Louisiana doctor who is transgender, said three insurance companies refused to reimburse her since she legally changed her name nearly two years ago.
The companies have since come to agreements with her and her Shreveport clinic, UrgentEMS, but not until after she started a petition that has garnered nearly 12,000 signatures and received news media attention about her cause, including inquiries from NBC News.
While the three insurers have agreed to update her name in their records and pay back claims, Najberg and her clinic have yet to receive any checks. In the meantime, she has spent her life savings — about $200,000 — to sustain her clinic, where she provides both primary and urgent care, including to more than 100 transgender patients, some of whom come from Alabama and Tennessee, two states that have passed restrictions on gender-affirming medical care for minors.
After Najberg changed her name in April 2021, she said, she updated it with all the necessary government offices and with databases from which most insurance companies pull information about providers.
She said Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield and United all updated the information and continued to reimburse her for the care she provided to her patients. But she said Aetna, Cigna and Humana had repeatedly denied her claims and refused to reimburse her.
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