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Pentagon Will Pay for Transgender Soldier's Reassignment Surgery

CBN

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The Pentagon will pay for a transgender soldier's gender reassignment surgery. It's the first time such surgery has been provided for a member of the military.

The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency approved a waiver for the surgery because the service member had already begun treatment, and the treating doctor deemed the surgery medically necessary, the Defense Department said.

In a statement emailed to CBN News, Major Dave Eastburn said, "This afternoon, an active-duty military member received a sex-reassignment surgery," the Pentagon said in a statement, adding that the surgery was performed in a private hospital because military hospitals do not have the "surgical expertise" needed to perform the operation.

Funding for service members' gender reassignment surgeries has become a hot-button issue in American politics, with some arguing that the cost would be a burden on the military.

President Donald Trump said this is why he announced a ban on transgender troops in July.

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

A 2016 study commissioned by the military found that allowing transgender troops to serve would "have minimal impact on readiness and health care costs" for the Defense Department. Health care costs would increase by an estimated $2.4m – a 0.04 to 0.13 percent increase in spending.

President Trump issued a formal memo in August, officially banning all new transgender recruits and giving Defense Secretary James Mattis the power to decide what would happen to active transgender service members.

The memo also ordered the Pentagon to stop paying for all transgender-related medical expenses, "except to the extent necessary to protect the health of an individual who has already begun a course of treatment to reassign his or her sex."

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