“The Pentagon’s fiscal 2021 budget request supports ongoing, sweeping changes to the military health system that will reduce the number of uniformed medical personnel and send non-active duty beneficiaries to contractors or civilian providers for their health care.”
“The $50.8 billion proposed Department of Defense medical budget released Monday continues reforms initiated in 2017 that place the service medical commands in charge of providing health care for uniformed personnel and gives oversight and responsibility of all military hospitals and clinics to the Defense Health Agency, to include staffing decisions.”
“According to the budget documents, this means some non-uniformed beneficiaries — active-duty family members, retirees and their family members — will continue receiving care at military treatment facilities from civilian staff or contractors, while others, ‘where feasible …. will be transitioned to a local network provider.’”
“The budget documents affirm what Defense Health Agency officials have said for months: the military health system must right-size the military medical forces to support operational medicine, while roughly 8 million non-uniformed beneficiaries will receive health care from civilian federal employees, contract care or in the community, via Tricare…”
“The fiscal 2021 budget request of $50.8 billion is a decrease of 1.2 percent from the fiscal 2020 enacted level, with the cuts coming mainly from the elimination of nearly $1.6 billion in research funding added each year to the Pentagon budget by Congress as part of the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program…” Read the full article here.
Source: Pentagon budget calls for ‘civilianizing’ military hospitals – By Patricia Kime, February 10, 2020. Military Times.
