The Trump administration is attacking LGBTQ+ rights nationwide, and San Francisco has declared itself sanctuary city for transgender people. But even as the city anticipates an influx of newcomers fleeing persecution elsewhere, older trans adults already living here face discrimination and threats to their health as the federal government cuts funding for crucial programs and erases data about their demographic groups.
Older LGBTQ adults are especially vulnerable to the effects of Medicaid cuts because they are disproportionately affected by poverty and might not have a traditional family structure to turn to for care, said Denny Chan, managing director for equity advocacy at Justice in Aging, a national organization fighting poverty among seniors.
Advocates also expressed concerns about the loss of data focused on LGBTQ+ people, typically called SOGI data, an acronym for sexual orientation and gender identity. The Trump administration recently stopped collecting this data across Medicare and Medicaid. NPR reported in February that the Census Bureau also stopped collecting data that could protect trans rights.
“Not being able to track SOGI data makes it really hard to prove that services are being accountably provided to LGBTQ communities when those communities can’t even be identified,” Chan said. “And that really is the strategy here, is to render a lot of these groups invisible from a public policy standpoint.”
