So you're telling me the US military can cut another 41 million dollars of rampant spending, not unlike frivolous camo, or superfluous training unrelated to warfare? That your best comparison is to point to other rampant spending in the military? When was the last time you spent time on a base, and seen first hand just what reduced, or moved budgets look like? And you are asking the military to eat up 220 million potential medical costs because? (edit, sorry, I used estimate of potential costs using numbers I already quoted, "showed that the direct medical costs (surgery and hormones) could be nearly $1 billion dollars over 10 years. Meanwhile, the lost time due to service members not being deployable or taking special leave could drive the total cost to anywhere from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion over 10 years." but that's from the hill )
And you're telling me that it is best to allow a pre-existing condition, that whose best treatment is extensive surgery alongside therapy to reduce anxiety, and depression (which already come with their own costs towards troops) for active service?
Nothing I have read has convinced me this is a bad policy. And that is part of the reason why I spend any time on this site, to come across those specific arguments.
Offhand, I’d say the reason you’re unconvinced is because you’ve started from faulty prior assumptions. Trump’s decision is based on his ignorance and bigotry. So long as you’re beating a dead horse, you’re just not going to ride it out of there. There’ll always be heartfelt, ludicrously wrong reasons given for opposing the integration of the U.S. military, dog-whistle language like ‘unit cohesion,’ but it’s as true that the military is strongest when it represents the society it serves. For Trump, and for his water carriers, society has never included certain people. My modest suggestion is not to let his mistake be yours, even if it means examining why you’ll blithely ignore the fact of the bigotry that trans people have always until now endured. These are people, us, not costs, and not Them.
So you're telling me the US military can cut another 41 million dollars of rampant spending, not unlike frivolous camo, or superfluous training unrelated to warfare? That your best comparison is to point to other rampant spending in the military? When was the last time you spent time on a base, and seen first hand just what reduced, or moved budgets look like? And you are asking the military to eat up 220 million potential medical costs because? (edit, sorry, I used estimate of potential costs using numbers I already quoted, "showed that the direct medical costs (surgery and hormones) could be nearly $1 billion dollars over 10 years. Meanwhile, the lost time due to service members not being deployable or taking special leave could drive the total cost to anywhere from $1.9 billion to $3.7 billion over 10 years." but that's from the hill )
And you're telling me that it is best to allow a pre-existing condition, that whose best treatment is extensive surgery alongside therapy to reduce anxiety, and depression (which already come with their own costs towards troops) for active service?
Nothing I have read has convinced me this is a bad policy. And that is part of the reason why I spend any time on this site, to come across those specific arguments.
Offhand, I’d say the reason you’re unconvinced is because you’ve started from faulty prior assumptions. Trump’s decision is based on his ignorance and bigotry. So long as you’re beating a dead horse, you’re just not going to ride it out of there. There’ll always be heartfelt, ludicrously wrong reasons given for opposing the integration of the U.S. military, dog-whistle language like ‘unit cohesion,’ but it’s as true that the military is strongest when it represents the society it serves. For Trump, and for his water carriers, society has never included certain people. My modest suggestion is not to let his mistake be yours, even if it means examining why you’ll blithely ignore the fact of the bigotry that trans people have always until now endured. These are people, us, not costs, and not Them.