By: Tim Starks | Roll Call –

Remember this recent story about the Pentagon’s Viagra budget of more than $500,000 last year? The Military Times threw some shade on it with its own reporting, which put the tally at $41.6 million, and $84.2 million on erectile dysfunction drugs overall.

Then there’s this:

And since 2011, the tab for drugs like Viagra, Cialis and Levitra totals $294 million — the equivalent of nearly four U.S. Air Force F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.

We said in the prior blog entry to set aside discussions about the wisdom of government spending for ED drugs in that dollar amount. That was only to make room for discussions about the larger point of why the Pentagon was spending money on ED at all.

As it happens, Military Times was onto the “why” part, too, and has better info than we shared.

While some studies have shown that the incidence of erectile dysfunction has increased among service members in the past several years, less than 10 percent of the prescriptions were for active-duty troops.

According to the data, active-duty troops received just 102,885 scripts for ED meds, totaling $7.67 million.

Military retirees and eligible family members also are covered by the benefit.

Source:

http://www.thesleuthjournal.com/pentagon-actually-spent-41-6-million-viagra-last-year-not-500k/

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