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US Military Spending Millions for Viagra for Troops Every Year

US Military Spending Millions for Viagra for Troops Every Year
(Getty Images/Liu Jin)

By    |   Wednesday, 26 July 2017 09:12 PM EDT

The U.S. military reportedly shells out out $41.6 million a year on Viagra for its troops — about five times more than the estimated medical costs for transgender members of the armed services.

The outlay for Viagra is part of $84 million total the military pays annually for erectile dysfunction medicines, a 2015 report by Military Times showed.

The statistics were resurrected by The Washington Post on Wednesday – when President Donald Trump announced a ban on transgender people serving in the military because of "the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail."

A study published last year by the Rand Corp. and commissioned by the Defense Department estimated treatments for transgender troops would run the military between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually.

"The implication is that even in the most extreme scenario that we were able to identify . . . we expect only a 0.13-percent ($8.4 million out of $6.2 billion) increase in healthcare spending," the Rand study concluded.

The higher estimate for transgender expenses is equal to less than one tenth of the price of a new F-35 fighter jet — or a thousandth of 1 percent of the Defense Department's annual budget, The Washington Post pointed out.

In an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper on Wednesday night, former Navy SEAL Kirsten Beck argued transgender troops have "been serving honorably" – and losing them will have "repercussions."

"Those are the people serving on our front lines of American freedom and liberty," Beck said. "And now they're going to be told they're going to be rejected and unworthy to serve? That's a huge slap in the face. And they have contracts.

"So there's going to be a lot of repercussions. You think it's expensive to pay for a few things for these individuals? This is going to get expensive really fast."

Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, an Iraq war veteran who lost her legs and partial use of her right arm in the conflict, denounced the transgender ban, and said she did not believe it was a purely military decision, as President Donald Trump has said.

"We've had transgender people who have served in the tens of thousands and have served over the course of our military's history," she told Cooper. "I don't know why the president is doing this. If anything, what he's doing is disruptive to unit cohesion."

"And the facts and figures he quotes are blatantly wrong," she added. "He says it's going to be too expensive when the cost estimate for the healthcare of transgender people is around in 2015, 2016, $5.6 million. The Pentagon spent $41 million on Viagra in that same time period. So there are other places that you can cut if you want to talk about cost."

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Politics
The U.S. military reportedly shells out out $41.6 million a year on Viagra for its troops — about five times more than the estimated medical costs for transgender members of the armed services.
military, spends, millions, viagra, erectile, dysfunction
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2017-12-26
Wednesday, 26 July 2017 09:12 PM
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