Taxpayers Foot Bill for Free Transgender Surgery for Military Thanks to Biden
Biden's order will allow treatments costing upward of $200,000
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Joe Biden's Jan. 25 transgender order will allow free gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel and veterans, and taxpayers will foot the bill.
As the United States grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, Biden's order will allow treatments costing upward of $200,000 for military members.
Tucked away inside Biden's order is a clause “Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform,” repealing an Obama-era policy that prohibited federally funded reassignment surgery.
This was followed up with memos from both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough stating that surgery is now an added benefit.
“This revised policy will also ensure all medically-necessary transition-related care authorized by law is available to all Service members,” Austin wrote.
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McDonough echoed in a VA email to employees:
“Perform an assessment of the necessary steps to eliminate the exclusion of ‘gender alteration’ (gender affirmation surgery) in the medical benefits package.”
But neither official said how much the added benefit would cost but rather pledged to undertake an analysis.
Trans surgeries for both men and women add up to $100,000-$200,000, according to the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery.
Though Biden claimed to treat transgender troops would have minimal impact on healthcare costs, USA Today investigation found otherwise.
The analysis found that the Pentagon spent $8 million to treat just 1,500 transgender military officials.
According to a federal study, there are over 15,000 service members and 134,000 veterans who identify as transgender.
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Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, supports transgender individuals serving in the military but argues the public should not pay for surgical intervention.
“This is radical and new territory for a presidential administration to force taxpayers to fund sexual reassignment surgeries for those in the military,” he told the Washington Examiner.
“I’m compassionate toward those individuals who want to undergo an elective surgery of this nature, but taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook to pay for it."
"It’s constitutionally dubious that Congress hasn’t passed these measures, but the administration, in a radical way, is pushing through this agenda. I sit on the committee that should debate these issues.”
Banks said the order also violates the religious liberties of Catholics and Christians.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Iraq, said Biden’s order currently reads like anyone in a war zone can suddenly take leave to undergo reassignment surgery.
“I would like to think the Pentagon would come up with a procedure … It’s completely irrational to change your gender right in front of a conflict,” he said.
“A lot of people [in the military] are outraged by this idea that you can just come in and get this [surgery] and be gone from your unit. Someone has to pick up the slack while you are gone.”
Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, called Biden's orders a “social experimentation,” arguing it was a follow-up to former President Barack Obama’s 2016 inclusiveness mandate that created chaos with sensitivity training and bathroom retrofits.
“By 2019, the Defense Department announced that it had redirected funds from salaries, equipment, and training for 22,992 psychotherapy visits, 9,321 hormone prescriptions, and a whopping 161 surgeries (ranging from hysterectomies and breast augmentation to 'male reproductive' construction),” Perkins said in a press release.
“While America faces rising threats from around the world, it's obvious that Joe Biden is only interested in using our military to fight one war: the culture's.”
