Donald Trump’s trans troops ban could cost almost a billion dollars

A ban on transgendr service members in the U.S. army could cost almost one billion dollars. Donald Trump claimed that his reasoning behind the band was to save on the “tremendous medical costs” that come with allowing trans people to serve. However, a new report by the Palm Centre has found that the cost to replace the transgender service members would be around 100 x greater than the current annual cost of providing health care. “President Trump said that he wants to fire honorably serving transgender troops in order to save money, but that begs the question, ‘How much money would it cost to implement the President’s vision?'” Palm Center Executive Director Aaron Belkin said. “It would be much more expensive to fire transgender troops then to let them keep serving. The President wants to spend $1 dollar to save a dime, and that really doesn’t make much business sense.” To get the figure, researchers multiplied the number of transgender service members – currently around 12,800, by the average per-person cost of recruiting and training a replacement for each service member who would be discharged ($75,000). Despite Trump’s tweets announcing the ban, there has yet to be an actual official reversal of the policy change Barack Obama made in 2016 to allow trans men and women to serve in the army. However, Trump has made in clear that officials are working on putting a ban into place.