Pentagon budget calls for 'civilianizing' military hospitals

[Recursion]

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2020/02/10/pentagon-budget-calls-for-civilianizing-military-hospitals/

Oh dear God

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.

[JaneQPublic]

1. Privatize them just like prisons and public schools and migrant camps...

It's the GOP way.

[NCjack]

2. We don't have enough millionaires in America. This is the way to make more,

at the expense of vets and taxpayers.

[Docreed2003]

3. Posted this on another thread...

5. This is infuriating and will have disastrous consequences
As a former military surgeon, caring for retirees and their families was a huge part of my practice. In fact, I credit that as being hugely important to ensuring that the skills I learned in surgical training weren't lost, because I was able to do more complex cases that I wouldn't have been able to necessarily do had our population been limited to active duty personnel.

For whatever reason, the powers that be in military medicine are focusing more and more on just the deployment role of their physicians. Physicians, particularly surgeons, have always been on a tight deployment schedules which disrupts their practice at the MTF and, in many cases, results in limited use of their skills. In my role as a forward deployed surgeon, my situation was unique in that we happened to be positioned at a forward hospital in a more isolated but very kinetic area. In six months, we cared for over 400 patients and performed over 150 major trauma cases. There were surgeons in our company that didn't operate at all in that seven months. Surgeons, in particular, have vocally complained that their skills withered while on active duty because they weren't getting enough cases, particularly complex cases. Military medicines response has been, well we'll just rotate docs through trauma centers, and we'll trim the service down to just those providers who will actively deploy, which only serves to undercut the complaints of their providers.

Additionally, like at Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune where I was stationed, the hospital provides a much needed outpatient and inpatient service to the retirees in the area who have no VA facility within a reasonable drive. Taking away that resource will only result in more delayed care and poorer outcomes. I think back to all the retirees I treated in my career an this makes me so angry. This is an outrageous move which will hurt retirees and only weaken military medicine

[Wounded Bear]

4. Well, that sounds like a death sentence for me...

[Frustratedlady]

5. I have a son-in-law who is in a special program which is doing extensive testing on his

Parkinson's disease, which he has been diagnosed with this year. I'm wondering if this will impact this program since he is retired?

I also wonder how it will affect survivors who are on Medicare, but receiving survivor's benefits?

Didn't they just change the process within the last year or so, where people could go to their personal physicians because they couldn't get in to the VA medical center? If so, it just seems like switching between methods would eat up much of the funding if for no other reason than rearranging paperwork/methods/facilities.

It would almost make you suspect a "make work/job-security" situation.

[Wellstone ruled]

6. Koch Industries has a

program on the shelf just for this occasion. This has been one of their Prize theft for decades.

Back in the 2000 time frame,had Flint Hill Resources as a Service Client. One of the Service areas within this Refinery was the Worker clinic. Staffed with full time Doctors,ER,RN's,LPN's,Ambulance and EMT's. The Director of this Clinic mentioned this model was able to be replicated any where anytime. These Clinics are prevalent with in the Koch Industry locations all over the Nation.

The Director at that time,mentioned the efforts by Koch to take over the VA Hospital in St Paul Mn on a contract to operate for profit basis.