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The whole time, she said, she was making a slow arc back toward the question of how to make healthcare better for queer and trans people. She then helped start Optum's venture arm, Optum Ventures, a $600 million investment fund whose mission, according to their site, is to fundamentally change healthcare. Breitenstein co-founded digital health startup Humedica, a health IT firm that was later sold to UnitedHealth's Optum unit. Breitenstein founded medical data analytics companies PrivaSource in 1999 and the Institute for Health Metrics in 2004, giving her a true understanding of how broken the healthcare system was in terms of access, heteronormativity, and bureaucratic-fueled confusion. Folx will provide tailored services that include gender-affirming hormone therapy (HRT) ED (erectile dysfunction) PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis for HIV) and STI testing.Īs of now, these are all the services Folx will provide, so members will have to go elsewhere for other health needs.īreitenstein has been wanting to make the healthcare system better since she worked at a Boston nonprofit helping queer and trans youth in the early 1990s, during the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis.Īfter getting a degree in public health, she caught the "entrepreneurial bug," she told Mashable. That experience, along with hearing stories from others, like her friend, is what inspired her to create Folx, a digital healthcare provider for queer and trans people that launches Thursday.įolx, styled as such because Breitenstein believes queer people has claimed this redux of folks, is the first-ever digital healthcare service provider to offer custom medical plans, starting at $59 a month, for the queer community. And then I add, "I don’t need a lecture on how babies are made - I’m gay.'" And I usually wait a beat too long because I’m a smart ass. No, I’m not worried about getting pregnant." Then comes the awkward pause and the confused look. I can’t count how many times I have had the following conversation: "Yes, I’m sexually active.
She describes her own experience of discrimination in her Medium post: "This is a population that has a tendency to be pretty alienated from a lot of structures of care," said Breitenstein in an interview with Mashable.ĥ2-year-old Breitenstein, a healthcare operator, investor, and entrepreneur, knows well the need for such spaces. A little more than 200 such health centers exist in the U.S. Indeed, there's a dearth of safe spaces for queer and especially trans people seeking healthcare.
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Even the queer and trans celebrities Breitenstein spoke to while developing Folx said they prefer the free clinic, because it's the place they feel safest from discrimination. And newer stats show that discrimination still impacts the community: Fifteen percent of overall LGBTQ participants in a 2020 Center for American Progress survey, and 28 percent of transgender participants, postponed or avoided care due to discrimination. Trump rolled back protections in healthcare for queer people just this year. That survey may be six years old, but it's still painfully relevant. That number jumped to 63 percent for individuals living with HIV, and 70 percent of trans and non-binary participants.
Fifty-six percent of lesbian, gay, and bisexual respondents to a 2014 Lambda Legal survey experienced healthcare discrimination, including healthcare workers refusing to touch them or using excessive precautions being blamed for their health status healthcare providers being physically or verbally abusive and being refused care altogether. This experience is, unfortunately, not unique in the queer and trans community. "It was basically illegal," Breitenstein's friend wrote, "but it was just easier than going to the doctor’s office." In the end, they ended up ordering hormones online from overseas. "I felt like I had to justify myself over and over again." That experience wasn't great, either: "The doctor kept asking me all kinds of questions about how long I had been living as a man and whether I had attempted suicide," the friend recalled in Breitenstein's Medium post on why she founded Folx. They felt their family doctor wouldn't understand, so they researched online and ended up at a clinic several towns away. Breitenstein, founder of the new queer/trans healthcare provider Folx, wanted to begin transitioning, they didn't know where to go.
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