| Court rules insurer must pay for boy's man boob removal |
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| Thursday, 05 April 2007 | |
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The boy underwent breast reduction in 2004, when he was 17, to correct the effects of bilateral gynecomastia, more commonly known as man boobs. When the insurer to pay for the procedure, the boy's father, Steven Schulman, paid for the operation himself at a cost of $7,500 and then sued the insurer for the cost. Papers submitted to the court said that the boy, of Hempstead, New York, was teased by his contemporaries and refused to engage in any activity that required him to bare his chest. He would refuse to go to the beach and declined to attend an out-of-state university because he feared his dormitory mates would make fun of him. In the first court hearing in September 2004, Manhattan Civil Court Judge Barbara Jaffe found that the boy's condition was preventing him from functioning as a normal adolescent. The judge said the boy's condition was "an objective, tangible and unusual source of turmoil, more akin to a clubfoot or cleft palate than to a large nose, heavy acne or diminutive breasts on an adolescent female, all of which are relatively common." Jaffe ordered GHI to pay $5,000 to the boy's father, who had already gone ahead with the breast reduction surgery for his son. GHI appealed this ruling, but their appeal was dismissed and the lower ruling was upheld in March 2006. They then appealed to the State Supreme Court's Appellate Division, but once again, the appeal was dismissed and the ruling was affirmed on Tuesday. "The condition suffered by plaintiff's son was characterized by plaintiff's medical providers as a 'deformity' and, particularly in the case of a 17-year-old male, clearly a devastating condition with 'psychosocial' consequences" the judges wrote. The judges added that it was "absurd to deny coverage on the grounds that plaintiff's son did not provide support from a mental health professional, particularly where the external review decision itself acknowledges that the patient suffers 'depression' and 'emotional distress' from this condition." |
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