Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Doug Collins said his agency will save “literally millions of dollars” by no longer providing transgender procedures in an exclusive sit-down interview with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The VA announced in March that it had ended programs providing “gender-affirming” prosthetics, cross-sex hormones and other transgender treatments under multiple presidencies — including the first Trump administration. Collins told the DCNF that the taxpayer money saved through his policy will be used to help veterans in need of more conventional health treatments.
“If we went ahead with this, it would be literally millions of dollars,” Collins told the DCNF.
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The VA has faced complaints across multiple presidencies about low-quality care, substandard medical facilities and slow bureaucracy. Before Collins, the agency considered it a priority to provide items such as fake female breasts, wigs, fake genitalia and “chest binders” for trans-identifying people, the DCNF previously reported.
“That’s just not something we’re going to do in the VA … because it really doesn’t fit our mission and where we’re supposed to be, and I think the general public understands that we’re not going to continue to go down this flight of gender dysphoria,” Collins said.
“We’re going back to just treating veterans,” Collins said. “We’re putting that back into prosthetics and our community health care programs.”
The secretary said there hasn’t been much resistance from within the department to getting rid of left-wing ideological priorities, unlike elsewhere in the Trump administration.
“We’ve got very little, frankly. We’ve got some questions from the Hill, but not [an] overwhelming amount of questions,” Collins said, referring to Congress. “I think they understand the process as well.”
“There’s [an] overwhelming majority that don’t understand or don’t agree with, the …. gender dysphoria issue and the way it’s become charged in our society,” Collins said about his agency.
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Collins did not give a definitive answer as to whether his agency will also reverse a Biden-era regulation allowing abortion and abortion counseling in limited circumstances at VA medical facilities. However, the secretary indicated that a review is underway.
“We’re still going through that process right now … We’re making sure whatever we do works out best for the veteran and also for the care that we provide,” Collins told the DCNF.
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