Pentagon Proposes Slashing Military Healthcare by $2,200,000,000

In the middle of a pandemic, the Trump Adm has proposed gutting the military healthcare system, all while protecting profits for wealthy defense contractors. This would hurt active duty troops, military retirees, & their families across the country.

Pentagon officials working on Defense Secretary Mark Esper's cost-cutting review of the department have proposed slashing military health care by $2.2 billion, a reduction that some defense officials say could effectively gut the Pentagon’s health care system during a nationwide pandemic.

Two senior defense officials say the effort has been rushed and driven by an arbitrary cost-savings goal, and argue that the cuts to the system will imperil the health care of millions of military personnel and their families as the nation grapples with Covid-19.

....the cuts are not supported by program analysis nor by warfighter requirements.

These cuts would imperil the health care of millions of military personnel and their families. We owe our servicemembers a debt that can never fully be repaid. Protecting their health care is the least we can do.

The department's effort to overhaul the military health system have recently come under scrutiny, as lawmakers pressed the Pentagon on whether the pandemic would affect those plans.

Roughly 9.5 million active-duty personnel, military retirees and their dependents rely on the military health system, which is the military's sprawling government-run health care framework that operates hundreds of facilities around the world.

The proposed health cuts.... would degrade military hospitals to the point that they will no longer be able to sustain the current training pipeline for the military’s medical force, potentially necessitating something akin to a draft of civilian medical workers into the military....

Our service members and military families sacrifice so much to protect our country. It is unconscionable that anyone would consider cutting their healthcare, especially during a pandemic.

“A lot of the decisions were made in dark, smoky rooms, and it was driven by arbitrary numbers of cuts,” said one senior defense official with knowledge of the process. “They wanted to book the savings to be able to report it.”

“It imperils the ability to support our combat forces overseas,” added a second senior official, who argued that Esper’s moves are weakening the ability to protect the health of active-duty troops in military theaters abroad. “They’re actively pushing very skilled medical people out the door.”

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/16/esper-eyes-22-billion-cut-military-health-care-395578