Don’t folks get gender affirming / plastic surgery for free or something? I think I heard it was covered because it lets military surgeons get practice for when they go work for private sector after their bit
The military and the VA offer gender affirming care, and what they offer varies.
For instance (I’m going off memory for active duty, I got out in 2017), if you’re active duty, I believe they’ll pay for everything so long as you lay out in your Transition Plan everything you want covered and your commanding officer approves it. You need “approval” to ensure that your absence during medical recovery won’t hinder mission readiness, so basically, if you’re about to be deployed in a month for 6 months, and you’re supposed to have gender affirming surgery tomorrow with a multi-month recovery, your surgery will likely be postponed.
The VA, which is for veterans, covers a majority of gender affirming care, but they aren’t legally allowed to cover everything. GRS/SRS is the big on, the military will cover that I believe, but the VA cannot and will not.
With Trump coming in, I have a feeling this is all going to go away, and they’re going to use a similar approach as the Federal Minimum Drinking Age Act to basically make LGBTQ+ healthcare illegal via withholding federal funding from those states who try to continue after a federal ban. “The states can choose their drinking age gender affirming care, but those who don’t follow the federal guidelines will lose access to XYZ federal funding.”
Don’t folks get gender affirming / plastic surgery for free or something? I think I heard it was covered because it lets military surgeons get practice for when they go work for private sector after their bit
The military and the VA offer gender affirming care, and what they offer varies.
For instance (I’m going off memory for active duty, I got out in 2017), if you’re active duty, I believe they’ll pay for everything so long as you lay out in your Transition Plan everything you want covered and your commanding officer approves it. You need “approval” to ensure that your absence during medical recovery won’t hinder mission readiness, so basically, if you’re about to be deployed in a month for 6 months, and you’re supposed to have gender affirming surgery tomorrow with a multi-month recovery, your surgery will likely be postponed.
The VA, which is for veterans, covers a majority of gender affirming care, but they aren’t legally allowed to cover everything. GRS/SRS is the big on, the military will cover that I believe, but the VA cannot and will not.
With Trump coming in, I have a feeling this is all going to go away, and they’re going to use a similar approach as the Federal Minimum Drinking Age Act to basically make LGBTQ+ healthcare illegal via withholding federal funding from those states who try to continue after a federal ban. “The states can choose their
drinking agegender affirming care, but those who don’t follow the federal guidelines will lose access to XYZ federal funding.”