The article mentions 134,000 transgender vets, and from quick googling the average cost of this surgery seems to be $50,000. So this will give $6.7 billion for this surgery alone. With the VA getting it’s money from the $706 billion FY 2021 defense budget, that’s nearly 1% of the entire defense budget going to a single surgery that affects about 0.7% of veterans (https://www.va.gov/vetdata/docs/Demographics/New_Vetpop_Model/1L_VetPop2018_National.xlsx). That’s insane.

For context, the Marine Corps is requesting $47.9 billion for FY 2022. That means this single surgery would cost nearly 14% of the amount that’s allocated to a 210,000 man service, that requires armored vehicles, weapons, ammunition, training, replacement parts, etc etc.

This is all coming at a time when they’re buying more F35s ($80 mil per); getting new pistols, upgraded tanks, and fitness equipment for a new PT test for the Army; transitioning the USMC to focus on combat with China; build more warships; and transitioning the DoD from counterinsurgency operations to large scale combat operations with peer adversaries. All while other vets can’t get basic PTSD support or (according to others in this thread) dental support from the VA.

I think it’s great the federal government is supporting transgender Americans who fought for this country. But the purpose of the DoD is to defend America, and to provide the training and resources required to do it. When they allocate such a large amount of their budget to less than 1% of veterans, while failing to support all veterans with basic services like dental, or fail to fully ensure the military is ready for peer threats, that’s a problem.