Hearing all the news accounts yesterday about the military transgender order, I wondered just what the costs might be for the military if the reassignment surgery were done by the government. I read that one desiring a reassignment surgery could expect to spend about $140K, depending on the extent of the surgery and the amount of plastic surgery.
I read that there were up to 6700 transgendered service people. $140K multiplied by 6700 is $938M in tax dollars. This does not include the required one year of hormone treatment prior to the surgery.
Not just a drop in the bucket.
two years hormones, plus psych care and narrowscope duty assignment (i.e., admin deskjockey), more than one year ‘recovery’ and permanent psych care, plus a possible political medical discharge with benefits for life which the government can’t grab back from their book deal on how they were so victimized and discriminated against in the military, poor thangs. The cost for the surgery is only a small part of the picture. Women soldiers who have children aren’t afforded a millionth of that ‘accommodation’.
One of the hundreds of issues was the hormone treatment. To reach some level of ‘completeness’....you have to stay on the hormone treatment. Some suggest that this is a permanent thing, that you really can’t ever stop the hormone treatment. So you can imagine....some grunt sent to some Afghan mountaintop for six months, and having carry a fair doseage of the stuff or have it delivered monthly.
The other attachment on this is that folks on the hormone treatment will likely experience mode-swings and depression. There is a higher rate of suicide for transgenders, and there is suggestion (not readily proven) that the whole hormone thing might be the basis for this higher rate.
One might also point out that once you agree to the operations/hormone treatment...women could come forward and ask why they can’t have a free boob job as well. So you could count thousands of active duty, dependent wives, and even dependent daughters.
Door after door was to be opened and the defense medical cost to the government would have doubled in a fairly short period of time.