Nearly 10 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and dependents rely on the military health system.
The Pentagon is considering slashing the military’s healthcare budget by $2.2 billion, a cut that some defense officials said could endanger the health care of millions of military personnel amid a global pandemic that has claimed more than 170,000 American lives.
The proposed cut to the military health system, first reported by Politico, is being developed as part of Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s cost-cutting review, which he began last year with the aim of saving the Pentagon money and making the agency more efficient. But two senior Defense Department officials told Politico the effort has been bungled and argued that such severe cuts could prove devastating to the Pentagon’s healthcare system.
Nearly 10 million active-duty personnel, military retirees, and dependents rely on the military health system, which operates facilities all around the world and provides care through TRICARE, a program that allows enrollees and their families to obtain health care outside of military networks.
Esper and his allies have argued that America’s private health system can fill the void left by the cuts, but Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for emergency and preparedness at the Department of Health and Human Services, has previously stated that the civilian healthcare system is “unable to absorb and provide sustained care for large numbers of injured service members returning from combat.”
Kadlec’s statement came in a January memo written in response to the Pentagon’s previously announced aim to slash the active duty medical force by about 20%, or roughly 17,000 personnel, over the next five years.
The two senior officials also said that the newly proposed cuts are not supported by program analysis or warfighter requirements.
“A lot of the decisions were made in dark, smoky rooms, and it was driven by arbitrary numbers of cuts,” one senior defense official who was aware of the process told Politico. “They wanted to book the savings to be able to report it.”
But these cuts would take away necessary funds for military hospitals and impede their ability to maintain the existing training pipeline for the military’s medical force, according to the officials. This would lead to an exodus of medical professionals, making it more difficult for the Pentagon to protect the health and well-being of active-duty servicemembers abroad, the second official said.
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“They’re actively pushing very skilled medical people out the door,” the second military official told Politico. This, in turn, could force something like a draft of civilian medical workers into the military, the official said, which would be all but impossible given the nation’s ongoing doctor shortage. “How’s a ‘draft’ even going to work?” the official said. “The U.S. is dealing with a doctor shortage.”
The Pentagon insists that the agency is dedicated to providing a ready medical force. “Any potential changes to the health system will only be pursued in a manner that ensures its ability to continue to support the Department’s operational requirements and to maintain our beneficiaries access to quality health care,” Pentagon spokesperson Lisa Lawrence told Politico.
The senior officials, however, argued that the proposed cuts would harm the military’s medical preparedness without actually saving money.
The veterans advocacy group, VoteVets, also had a different take from Lawrence. “When will people realize the Trump administration does NOT care about our military service members?!” the group wrote in a tweet on Sunday. “We’re in the midst of a pandemic and they want to cut healthcare?!”
Will Goodwin, the organization’s director of government relations, said the new proposal reflected the problems with Esper’s overall approach to leading the agency.
“Issues regarding personnel have been abysmal during this administration, but especially so under Secretary Esper. It should not be a shock that [aerospace and defense manufacturer] Raytheon’s top lobbyist became Secretary of Defense and is now considering pulling money from health care for our troops,” Goodwin told COURIER in a statement. “The first order of business is to stop this dangerous course of action, and we are working with Democratic leaders on the Senate Armed Services Committee to make that happen. But, should there be resistance from the Pentagon, we’re prepared to mobilize our supporters, in a campaign against this move.”
Many Democrats, including Alabama Sen. Doug Jones, also spoke out against the effort.
The two senior officials who spoke to Politico blamed John Whitley, leader of the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office (CAPE), for the proposed cuts.
Whitley previously sought to shut down the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USU), which trains graduates for the medical corps, as part of the first defense-wide review last year, one official said. Esper rejected that initial effort, but CAPE is now asking for cuts to USUS as part of the $2.2 billion. These reductions would include ending all basic research funding for combat casualty care, infectious disease, and military medicine for USU.
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USU has been actively involved in the military’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, training and graduating 230 medical officers and Nurse Corps officers early from the 2020 School of Medicine. The university has also been involved in clinical trials dedicated to finding ways to fight the virus, and has contributed to the federal government’s vaccine development efforts.
The proposed cuts would be devastating for the USU, leaving it unprepared for the next pandemic, the officials said.
“What’s been proposed would be devastating, and it’s coming right out of Whitley’s shop,” said one of the senior officials. “USU would be bled to death.”
Keya Vakil Keya is a reporter at COURIER, where he covers everything from healthcare to climate change. Prior to joining Courier Newsroom, Keya worked as a researcher in the film industry and dabbled in the political world.
