In May 2019, many people raised a question whether the U.S. government is paying for erectile dysfunction (ED) drugs, such as Viagra, after a controversial image was circulated on social media.
The image shows a woman holding a board at a 2017 International Women’s Day rally, which mentions “Viagra is government funded,” with $41.6 million spent a year on Viagra by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) in 2014.
The image came to light in relation to a separate controversy in 2017, when President Trump announced a “decision to ban transgender people from serving in the U.S. military, claiming the military cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender [people] in the military would entail.”
At that time, many news articles reported that the DoD has been spending far more on ED medication Viagra than it would actually cost to provide health care to transgender service members.
In February 2015, the Military Times posted an article that mentioned figures provided by the Defense Health Agency (DHA), a subsidiary of the DoD, which documented it in 2014. The article stated:
- The Department of Defense spent $84.24 million on 1.18 million erectile-dysfunction-medication prescriptions for armed services members (including retirees) and their family members
- This figure included: $41.6 million on 905,083 Viagra prescriptions, $22.82 million on 185,841 Cialis prescriptions, and $2.24 million on 1,699 Revatio prescriptions
- 102,885 prescriptions were for active-duty troops, at a cost of $7.67 million
In fact, the DoD confirmed that almost all of these figures were accurate for the year 2014, with a few mild corrections.
The DoD continues to buy Viagra, according to data posted on the public transparency tool usaspending.gov.
Several attempts have been made in 2017 and 2019 to make political points by placing the controversy along with coverage for ED prescriptions for service members and their families, which do not tell the whole story. The DoD provides coverage for ED prescriptions and also covers birth control prescriptions. According to the Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center’s data in September 2014, the rate of ED diagnoses among active service members had doubled from 2004 to 2013 and 48 percent of cases were psychological, meaning that their ED was caused by mental health issues such as depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
