Paratroopers from the 2nd Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, deploy to the U.S. Central Command area of operations, Jan. 1, 2020.
U.S. taxpayers will pay for sex reassignment surgery for military personnel. Under an executive order signed by President Joe Biden, taxpayers will pay for sex reassignment surgeries for active duty military personnel and veterans, with some treatments costing as much as $200,000.
The executive order on gender reassignment, signed by Biden on Jan. 25, repeals the Obama administration’s policy prohibiting federal funding for sex reassignment surgery and inserts a provision that “allows all qualified Americans to serve in uniform.
Subsequently, both Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough specifically noted in the memo that gender reassignment surgery is now an additional benefit.
The order calls for “the establishment of a process by which transgender service members can change gender while on active duty,” and officials have 60 days to implement the order.
Austin wrote: “All service members will be ensured access to all medically necessary and legally authorized transgender care.”
In an email from the VA to employees, McDonough also said the necessary steps will be evaluated to eliminate the exclusion of “gender reassignment” (gender confirmation surgery) from the medical benefits program.
Neither official said how much the added benefit would cost, only that they promised to analyze it.
An online chart from the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery shows that gender reassignment surgeries for men and women come in a variety of forms and cost $100,000 to $200,000 cumulatively.
Biden said in his order that the cost of military transgender has a negligible impact on health care costs, but a 2019 survey by USA Today newspaper refutes his claim. The investigation revealed that it cost the Defense Department $8 million just to treat 1,500 transgender officers, including hormone treatments and some surgeries. It’s unclear why the surgeries were allowed at the Time.
A federal study shows more than 15,000 service members and 134,000 veterans have identified as transgender.
Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks, a veteran, supports transgender people serving in the military, but he said that doesn’t mean the public should pay for gender reassignment surgery.
“It’s radical, new territory for a president’s administration to force taxpayers to fund sex reassignment surgery for military personnel.” Banks told the Washington Examiner.
“I have sympathy for those who want to undergo surgery of this nature, but taxpayers shouldn’t have to pay for it.” Banks added that Congress did not pass the measures, but the administration is pushing this agenda in an aggressive way that is constitutionally untenable.
The order’s impact on combat power is also staggering, said one veteran. Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, who commanded Army units in Iraq and is now affiliated with The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, said Biden’s order gives the impression that transgenderism may take precedence over combat.
Spoehr noted that many people may be tempted to join the military simply to undergo state-sponsored sex reassignment surgery as a result.
Tony Perkins, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and president of the nonprofit Family Research Council, noted in a Jan. 25 statement that while the United States faces rising threats from around the world, it is clear that Biden is interested in only one war –fighting the Culture war with the military.
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