“… In the halls of the Pentagon, White House and Capitol Hill, however, a very different war has occupied much of his time, an ongoing battle to contain healthcare costs and a series of spending bills over the past three years designed to reorganize military medicine to dig for deeper savings.”
“That was punctuated in President Donald J. Trump’s Fiscal Year 2020 budget request to Congress and its plan to trim about 18,000 medical billets from the Air Force, Army and Navy, which also provides healthcare for Marines and their families.”
“Pentagon officials estimate a quarter of the slots are empty already and some uniformed positions can morph into civilian jobs increasingly overseen by the Defense Health Agency, which was launched in 2012 to better integrate the services’ military treatment facilities dotting the globe.”
“What the proposed budget cuts and ongoing mergers mean for the Navy’s clinics, hospital ships and research units around the world is unclear, but the figure that glows like neon in [retired Navy surgeon general Vice Adm. C. Forrest Faison III]’s brain is ‘5,386.’”
“That’s the number of medical personnel he might need to boot to satisfy budget cuts. At the same time, the Pentagon is trying to build a 355-ship Navy and expand the sea service’s air squadrons, commands that will need more medical personnel to staff them.”
“If enacted, the sailors most likely to be affected are the 30,000 active duty corpsmen. They’re divided into 40 technical specialties, everything from the dental lab to urology, and corpsmen serve at 128 different facilities across the globe and on board ships at sea. They’re taking care of 2.7 million people.”
“… Officials at the Pentagon and DHA declined to talk to Navy Times about the proposed cuts or Faison’s fears, except to note that House lawmakers inserted language into a rival spending bill that would postpone many of the changes until the Pentagon produces detailed plans that account for risks to beneficiaries, especially service members prepping for future combat.” Read the full article here.
Source: Prognosis good for Navy Medicine, but budget concerns loom – November 15, 2019. Navy Times.
