Professor Belkin: Annual Health-Care Costs for Transgender Troops Would Be $5.6 Million

HORNET -- If Trump cared about cost or disruption to the military he wouldn’t have enacted the ban. Though it’s a common shibboleth on the right that covering gender-transition related treatment will cost the Pentagon $1.3 billion over the next decade, it’s not true. According to Aaron Belkin, an expert at San Francisco State University, the cost would only be $5.6 million annually. Comparatively, the annual health-care budget for the military is $50 billion. The Pentagon currently spends $41.6 million annually on Viagra — almost eight times more than the cost of trans-related healthcare.