House lawmakers want to stop any reductions in service or closures of military hospitals or clinics by the Department of Defense, according to draft legislation under consideration this week in the Armed Services Committee.<\/p>\n
The panel\u2019s personnel subcommittee has proposed limiting the DoD\u2019s plans to restructure the military health system and called for reversing any changes the department has made to 41 military treatment facilities. <\/p>\n
The subcommittee\u2019s draft of the fiscal 2027 National Defense Authorization bill also would improve congressional oversight of military medical reforms by requiring the Defense Health Agency to give quarterly updates to Congress of its plans to change the system. <\/p>\n
The proposals stem from a massive overhaul of the military health system reforms initiated under the fiscal 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, which called for transferring military hospital and clinic management to the Defense Health Agency and reducing administrative redundancies across the system.<\/p>\n
The legislation ultimately aimed to focus the military health system on training military medical personnel for combat operations and caring for active-duty troops, and placing non-military patients in private sector care covered by the DoD. <\/p>\n
As a result of the reforms, DHA and the military services planned to restructure the entire hospital system, announcing in 2020 that it would improve two military medical centers and consolidate or downsize 48 facilities<\/a>, including 38 that would no longer see military families or retirees as patients.<\/p>\n At the time, Thomas McCaffery, who served as assistant secretary of defense for health affairs in the first Trump administration, said the changes were necessary to prepare military physicians and troops for deployment.<\/p>\n \u201cWe reviewed all facilities through the lens of their contributions to military readiness \u2014 that includes MTFs [being] operated to ensure service members are medically ready to train and deploy,\u201d McCaffery said in a 2020 report to Congress.<\/p>\n But those reforms bled patients from military heath facilities, resulting in inadequate numbers for military physicians to maintain their skills. In turn, services degraded across many military hospitals and clinics, according to senior enlisted personnel.<\/p>\n In late 2024, the Defense Department reversed course on the plan to shed patients to private care, vowing to bring back 7% of patients by the end of 2026<\/a>. It also has announced several partnerships with community health facilities to ensure that military physicians get adequate trauma training and patient exposure to maintain their skills.<\/p>\n But the DoD has failed to provide information to Congress regarding the reforms, frustrating members with its lack of candor regarding any planned closures of facilities.<\/p>\n