Military spends five times as much on Viagra as it would on transgender troops' medical care

The military spends $41.6 million annually on Viagra - roughly five times the estimated spending on medical care for transgender troops. Photo / Getty Images

By Christopher Ingraham

President Donald Trump's ban on transgender people serving in the military cited "medical costs" as the primary driver of the decision.

"Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," the President tweeted.

Trump didn't offer any numbers to support his claim, but a Defence Department-commissioned study published last year by the Rand Corp provides exhaustive estimates of transgender service members' potential medical costs.

Considering the prevalence of transgender service members among the active duty military and the typical health-care costs for gender transition-related medical treatment, the Rand study estimated that these treatments would cost the military between $2.4 million and $8.4 million a year.

The study didn't include estimates of costs for reservists, because of "their highly limited military health care eligibility". It also didn't include estimates for retirees or military family members, because they may also have "limited eligibility" for care via military treatment facilities.

"The implication is that even in the most extreme scenario that we were able to identify, we expect only a 0.13-per cent ($8.4 million out of $6.2 billion) increase in health care spending," Rand's authors concluded.

By contrast, total military spending on erectile dysfunction medicines amounts to $84 million annually, according to an analysis by the Military Times - 10 times the cost of annual transition-related medical care for active-duty transgender service members.

The military spends $41.6 million a year on Viagra alone, according to the Military Times ' analysis - roughly five times the estimated spending on transition-related medical care for transgender troops.

Looked at another way, the upper estimate for annual transgender medical costs in the military amounts to less than one-10th of the price of a new F-35 fighter jet. Or, 1000th of one per cent of the Defence Department's annual budget.

The price of providing medical care to transgender service members, in other words, is negligible, and hardly "tremendous" as the President put it.