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Medicaid in New York will begin covering gender-transition care for youths under a state regulation that goes into effect Wednesday, health department officials said. The court-ordered expansion of coverage is the latest in a series of changes instituted by the Department of Health in the past two years related to transgender health care. Until last March, a 1998 state regulation banned Medicaid coverage of all transition-related care. (Ramey, 12/6)

By the time John Ballard reached his teens, he had threatened to kill himself with broken glass, had temper tantrums in school and was in and out of a hospital crisis unit. The summer after seventh grade, he taped a note to the steering wheel of his mother’s van: “Mom, I love you and everything you’ve done for me. I don’t want you to hate me after this, but I’ve always felt like I’ve been a girl.” (Ramey, 12/6)