Pentagon pays for trans soldier’s transition surgery
Despite President Trump’s effort to ban transgender military service and the expenditure of military health dollars to support transition by soldiers, a transgender active-duty service member had gender affirmation surgery on Tuesday. The procedure was paid for by the government.
The Defense Department sent a statement to many news outlets, saying: “"This afternoon, an active-duty military member received a sex-reassignment surgery. Military hospitals do not have the surgical expertise to perform this type of surgery, therefore it was conducted in a private hospital.
"Because this service member had already begun a sex-reassignment course of treatment, and the treating doctor deemed this surgery medically necessary, a waiver was approved by the director of the Defense Health Agency. The Supplemental Health Care Program will cover this surgery in accordance with the Department's interim guidance on transgender Service members."
“The patient is an infantry soldier who identifies as a woman, according to a source close to the service member. She got her Combat Infantry Badge in Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan in 2003,” NBC News said, quoting a source.
Last year, the Obama administration lifted the long-time ban on transgender military service members. President Trump in July revoked that Executive Order in a series of three tweets. He followed up in August with an order to the military to ban enlistment by transgender people, gave the DoD six months to come up with a plan to deal with transgender military already serving and directed that no defense dollars be spent for healthcare related to transition.
A judge later overruled the president’s action, preventing him from reversing Obama’s transgender troops policy.
For more coverage of Trump’s attempt to ban transgender military members, visit:
Judge in trans military ban case blasts Trump’s tweets
DC court bars Trump from reversing transgender troops policy
DoD panel of experts to discuss transgender military members
LGBT+ discrimination abounds in the Trump administration.
Trump had defended the ban as a cost-saving measure. That stance was ignored a RAND Corporation study that estimated medical care for gender transition would only increase military health care expenditures by between $2.4 million and $8.4 million a year, an increase of between 0.04 and 0.13 percent. The president instead was relying on estimates that such healthcare would cost billions that was being claimed by right-wing media.
Copyright The Gayly – November 15, 2017 @ 12 p.m. CST.