Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said he would be “open” to re-examining the military’s ban on transgender people’s openly serving in the armed forces.

“I do think it should be continuously reviewed,” he told ABC’s Martha Raddatz on Sunday, referring to the military’s medical policy barring transgender people from service. “I’m open to that, by the way.”

Hagel did not definitively say whether he thought the ban should be reversed. But he added that while some troops serving in remote areas don’t always have the proper “medical attention” that transgender service members might need, “every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have the opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it.”

Although the United States lifted its longtime “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which barred gay and lesbian people from openly serving in the military, in 2010, that change applied to sexual orientation, not gender identity.

Current U.S. military standards of medical fitnesss disqualify from service individuals with a “history of major abnormalities or defects of the genitalia such as change of sex” or with “psychosexual conditions,” including “transvestitism” and “gender identity disorder.”

In other words, the Pentagon categorizes transgender identity as a psychological disorder and bars from service anyone who may have had surgery related to transgender identity.

A March 2014 report from the Palm Center (PDF), a think tank at San Francisco State University, said that nontransgender troops’ medical needs, such as antidepressants and other psychological treatments, were no more extensive than the needs of transgender troops.

“We find that there is no compelling medical rationale for banning transgender military service and that eliminating the ban would advance a number of military interests, including enabling commanders to better care for their service members,” said the report, which was co-authored by Dr. Jocelyn Elders, a former U.S. surgeon general under President Bill Clinton.

The American Psychiatric Association in 2012 removed the term “gender identity disorder” from the DSM-V, the latest edition of the official manual of psychiatric disorders used by mental health professionals for diagnoses. Instead, the DSM-V refers to “gender dysphoria” (PDF), which some transgender rights advocates prefer because of its more understanding tone. That’s because the manual says that “gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder” and adds that “the critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition.”

Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, who is serving 35 years in prison for leaking classified documents to National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, announced her gender preference in August 2013. While a judge recently granted Manning a name change — she was previously known as Bradley, and her gender dysphoria was confirmed by the Army — the military will not grant her the hormone treatments she requested and will continue to refer to Manning as male.