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3 Out of 525,600 Minutes: U.S. Military Budget for Gender Transition
We can collectively afford gender-affirming healthcare
In 2015, during the Obama administration, the Secretary of Defense started a working group to consider what would happen if the military began “welcoming transgender persons to serve openly,” as he put it then.
A year later, the RAND Corporation released its report on the matter. Supposing that 0.1–0.5% of personnel were transgender, it estimated that, in 2014, there had been 1,320–6,630 trans personnel on active duty and 830–4,160 in the Selected Reserve. It anticipated that they may need some kind of “accommodations,” defined as policy adjustments so they could live in their gender.
It further guessed that, going forward, each year 40–190 personnel would seek to transition, and that only some of this group would seek hormones and surgery.
According to the 2016 report: If the military were to begin paying for gender-affirming hormones and surgeries, it would pay $2.4–8.4 million per year, which, the report noted, would be about a ten-thousandth of overall military healthcare costs. Or, if you…
