The Biden administration is using June, marked by LGBT activists as Pride Month, to announce that taxpayers will foot the bill for veterans who want to surgically change their biological sex. Veterans’ Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough said the move is a way to “spend the taxpayers’ money wisely.”
“You know, the cost projection is from – anywhere from just over a million dollars a year to somewhere closer to $30 million a year,” McDonough said Thursday in an interview with taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR). “We also assess it might get a little bigger than that because we assess that there may be as many as 3,000 veterans who would have this care if they could get it, those waiting for it. So if that’s the case, it could get up to as much as $71 million all in by 2028.”
“So these are obviously big numbers,” McDonough said. “We take great care to spend the taxpayers’ money wisely. But we also think that these are manageable numbers. And over time, if we make this investment, we’ll save costs on things like mental health care treatment and other health care problems that would result of our transgender vets not having access to this care.”
McDonough said that the “governing body” at Veterans’ Affairs recommended the policy.
NPR is celebrating Pride month with stories about people who reject their biological sex to live a lifestyle based on the sex they “identify” with:
“They unanimously recommended that we begin to provide this service based on the simple finding that those transgender veterans who suffer from gender dysphoria and who get treated in this way have a dramatically better outlook on mental health and – as against serious questions like suicide than those who do not,” McDonough said. “So I think they thought this was best clinical outcome.”
“There are an estimated 134,000 transgender veterans in the U.S. today and another 15,000 serving in the armed forces,” NPR host Ari Shapiro said in the interview on All Things Considered. “So when can these people expect to be able to use this policy? When will it be implemented?”
“We anticipate that process will take us the next two years or so to be in a position to provide the care,” McDonough said. “And we estimate about 543 veterans annually will be eligible for the surgery. So we think these are both important numbers but manageable numbers inside our current budget envelope for example.”
McDonough said that the public will also be allowed to comment on the proposed rule before it becomes final.
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