5 Things That Cost More Than Military Transgender Health Care

President Donald Trump declared on Twitter Wednesday that the U.S. government “will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military.” He cited cost as one of the reasons for the decision.

“Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail. Thank you,” tweeted the president.

READ: Trump's Transgender Military Ban Prompts Right Wing Twitter Reactions

The move is a reversal of a decision by former President Barack Obama that allowed transgender people to serve in the military openly, pay for their transgender issue-related health care, and set a future deadline for allowing transgender people to openly join the military going forward.

The Rand Corporation, a think tank, studied transgender military issues in 2016. The study estimated that there are somewhere between 1,320–6,630 transgender people in active military service out of around 1.3 million service members. Some advocacy groups have estimated the number to be higher.

The study estimated that “extending gender transition–related health care coverage to transgender personnel indicated that active-component health care costs would increase by between $2.4 million and $8.4 million annually, representing a 0.04- to 0.13-percent increase in active-component health care expenditures.”

Therefore, the cost that Trump is referring to for transgender military health care is between $2.4 million and $8.4 million per year. By contrast, the president's semi-regular trips to his Mar-a-Lago resort have cost taxpayers millions for each trip. In fact, examples of excessive and/or wasteful government spending are in no shortage. The following are five things that cost more than transgender military health care — by a long shot.

Trump’s trips to Mar-a-Lago: Around $21 million (so far)

Trump has been to Mar-a-Lago seven times so far, to golf and for other business. The administration has been particularly secretive of when exactly Trump golfs and when he just visits his golf courses to conduct business. In the 26 weeks Trump has been in office, he has spent 41 days visiting any one of his respective golf courses — including Mar-a-Lago. Each trip to Mar-a-Lago costs approximately $3 million, according to the Washington Post in March. The estimate comes from a Government Accountability Office study of a 2013 Barack Obama trip to Palm Beach.

Forest camouflage for Afghan troops: $28 million

The top oversight official in Afghanistan announced Tuesday he was opening a criminal probe into how the Pentagon may have wasted $28 million on forest uniforms in a country that’s only around two percent forest according to McClatchy DC.

20 barely used transport planes for Afghanistan: $486 million

A Department of Defense inquiry looked into a transport plane program in Afghanistan that ended in 2013 that created 20 transport planes that mostly weren’t flown and lacked spare parts. Sixteen of the planes ended up being scrapped for metal for $32,000. The waste was unearthed by ProPublica last year in a study of how $17 billion was wasted in Afghanistan.

READ: Trump's Transgender Military Ban Prompts Right Wing Twitter Reactions

Drug war in Afghanistan, now the world leader in heroin production: $8 billion

This figure also came from the ProPublica study. In the middle of the United States' ongoing war in Afghanistan in 2007, the United Nations found that 93 of percent non-pharmaceutical-grade opiates originated in Afghanistan.

Administrative waste: $125 billion

The Department of Defense commissioned a study issued in 2015 that identified how the department could save $125 billion over five years with no layoffs or reductions in military personnel. The Pentagon tried to kill the study because they thought it would make them look bad in front of Congress and possibly lead to budget cuts, according to the Washington Post last year.