On Tuesday, September 4, 2012, U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf ordered state prison officials to provide a taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery to transgender inmate, Michelle Kosilek, who was born as a man but has received hormone treatments and lives as a woman in an all-male prison. Kosilek is serving life in prison for the killing of his wife in 1990.
Tax-payers should not be forced to pay for medical services that are not generally covered under the majority of insurance plans they hold. In other words, treatments that are difficult or impossible for the average American to get their insurance company to cover should not be preformed on prison inmates at tax-payers' expense. If the inmate opts for such medical treatment he/she should pay for it him/herself.