The Medications Basket Committee decided Wednesday that the state will fund voice surgery for transgender people, at the expense of funding other drugs.
According to a report by journalist Inbar Toiser, the decision to divert a budget from the health basket to fund the surgery was controversial.
One committee member said: "When cutting life-saving things like cancer treatment maybe this should not be a priority." Another member of the committee replied, "After the upheaval they went through, it is our duty."
Religious Zionism party chairman MK Bezalel Smotrich responded: "Thank you very much to Naftali Bennett, Ayelet Shaked, Matan Kahana, Nir Orbach and Idit Silman, who formed a government of change and healing that 'puts everything aside', also the cancer patients, and promotes only 'undisputed issues like funding voice treatments for transgender people from the drug basket ... when you get lost along the way there is no limit to the madness anymore."