{"id":61389,"date":"2015-08-14T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2015-08-14T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=61389"},"modified":"2015-08-13T18:51:34","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T22:51:34","slug":"aaron-belkin-ph-d-transgender-medical-costs-are-negligible-for-dod","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=61389","title":{"rendered":"Aaron Belkin, Ph.D: Transgender medical costs are negligible for DoD"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine written by Aaron Belkin, Ph.D. entitled Caring for Our Transgender Troops \u2014 The Negligible Cost of Transition-Related Care<\/a> to convince Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to lift the ban on transgender military personnel. Doctor Belkin, Ph.D says that the military can easily afford to allow transgender people to serve in the military. In fact, he figures that $.22\/service member\/month ought to cover it.<\/p>\n

Of course, the cost will depend on how many transgender personnel serve and utilize care, and estimates are sensitive to certain assumptions, such as the expectation that the military will not become a \u201cmagnet\u201d employer for transgender people seeking health care benefits. Though my utilization and cost estimates are quite close to actual data provided by an allied military force, it seems clear that under any plausible estimation method, the cost amounts to little more than a rounding error in the military’s $47.8 billion annual health care budget.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The $.22 is based on his estimate of 12,000 transgender folks currently serving. I’m not sure where he gets that figure from, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t either;<\/p>\n

My calculations are as follows. In 2014, scholars estimated that 15,500 transgender personnel served in the military out of a total force of 2,581,000, but they included troops who were ineligible for health benefits.1 Moreover, the military has become smaller in recent years: as of May 31, 2015, a total of 2,136,779 troops served in the Active and Selected Reserve components and were thus eligible for health benefits. Assuming that the number of transgender personnel has declined along with the overall force size, and excluding those serving in Reserve components whose members are ineligible for medical benefits, I estimate that 12,800 transgender troops serve currently and are eligible for health care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because nameless “scholars” actually “estimated” the number last year, well, that provides a good basis for the assumption, doesn’t it? But, even if that number is correct, that doesn’t mean that it will remain static, does it?<\/p>\n

[S]cientists agree that for many, transition-related care (gender-affirming surgery, cross-sex hormone therapy, or both) is medically necessary, and state regulators have found medical exclusions to be indefensible and in some cases unlawfully discriminatory.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That cements the contention that the military will be a “\u201cmagnet\u201d employer for transgender people seeking health care benefits” doesn’t it? Everyone who wants free re-assignment treatment will join. He then averages the cost of treatment for Californians who underwent the treatment at $29,929 for six years of treatment, and that in the Australian Army they only spent $22,132 per person.<\/p>\n

There are costs, in other words, of not providing transition-related care, due to potential medical and psychological consequences of its denial, paired with the requirement to live a closeted life.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

Some observers may object to the concept that the military should pay for transition-related care, but doctors agree that such care is medically necessary. And though costs can be high per treated person, they are low as a percentage of total health spending, similar to the cost of many other treatments that the military provides. Even if actual costs exceed these estimates on a per-capita basis for persons requiring care, the total cost of providing transition-related care will always have a negligible effect on the military health budget because of the small number treated and the cost savings that the provision of such care will yield. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, well, there are other things that Doctor Ph.D hasn’t considered. Like the fact that there are a lot of mental health issues involved – a lifetime of treatment and monitoring which will carry over to the VA and drain funds unnecessarily from that agency as well. I recommend that if a transgender member of the military requires more than the Doctor PhD’s $.22\/month estimate that he pay it out of his pocket. You know, putting his money where his mouth is.<\/p>\n

But the overarching question that needs to be answered by the Defense Secretary before he lifts the ban on transgender lifestyle in the military is; How does this improve the military? How does this improve our chances to win the next war? I mean that’s their whole reason for existing – to kill people and break things. So how does spending this $.22\/day\/month\/servicemember make the service better. If the answer sounds like it is written by a social engineer, then the Secretary should decide against it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s a piece in the New England Journal of Medicine written by Aaron Belkin, Ph.D. entitled … Aaron Belkin, Ph.D: Transgender medical costs are negligible for DoD<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":61390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[237],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-big-pentagon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61389\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/61390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}