Rosendale Opposes VA Funding of Gender Reassignment Surgery

Montana U.S. Representative Matt Rosendale called into the KGVO Radio Newsmakers line on Tuesday to explain his opposition to allowing the Veterans Administration to fund gender reassignment surgery, as it does not fall under a ‘service related injury’.

“The Veterans Administration has now entered into the culture war and it's really quite troubling to me,” said Rosendale. “We should be providing these benefits to the best of our ability for the veterans that have earned them, and to make sure that only service related injuries are being covered.”

Rosendale further explained the proposal from the VA.

“The latest proposal is to cover transgender surgery for veterans,” he said. “We don't even have a good estimate of the cost. They say that there are 4,000 veterans that would be eligible and or even looking to have this surgery done. But no one knows either where that number came from or who that number came from.”

Rosendale said the cost of performing the gender reassignment surgeries would overwhelm the VA’s medical budget.

“The package of male to female surgical procedures would cost $110,450 and female to male procedures would cost as much as $89,000,” he said. “We're talking about a taxpayer expense of $30 billion over 10 years, and these are not service related injuries.”

Rosendale said the VA is already struggling to fund its current mission, without adding non-service related surgeries.

“The VA doesn't even have the ability, and it has not exercised the ability to deliver the benefits that they promised to the veterans that are that are serving and putting their lives on the line and at risk and the injuries that they received,” he said. “Why in the world are we going to go out because of this woke culture, and start trying to deliver benefits that the vast majority of the taxpayers across state of Montana would not authorize.”

Rosendale is in his first term as Montana’s lone U.S. Representative.