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.

The panel’s personnel subcommittee has proposed limiting the DoD’s plans to restructure the military health system and called for reversing any changes the department has made to 41 military treatment facilities.

The subcommittee’s 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.

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.

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.

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, including 38 that would no longer see military families or retirees as patients.

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.

“We reviewed all facilities through the lens of their contributions to military readiness — that includes MTFs [being] operated to ensure service members are medically ready to train and deploy,” McCaffery said in a 2020 report to Congress.

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.

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. 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.

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.

Concerns voiced by lawmakers over changes to facilities that weren’t made public, such as Keller Army Community Hospital, West Point, New York, which was to lose its inpatient beds and Fort Leonard Wood’s new hospital. That hospital was to open not as a full-service hospital as planned, but an ambulatory clinic, which prompted several legislative changes, including the proposed fiscal 2027 NDAA restrictions.

Under the draft NDAA, DHA would not be allowed to make changes proposed for 41 facilities and must “reverse any steps to carry out a service change” and “restore personnel and clinical services affected by any such service change to a level that existed as of March 3, 2026.”

According to the proposed legislation, three facilities faced downsizing from hospitals to ambulatory care facilities, meaning they would have no inpatient capabilities. Those included:

  • Eisenhower Army Medical Center, Fort Gordon, Georgia;
  • 88th Medical Group, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, (including closing pediatric cardiology and discontinuing chiropractic care); and
  • Naval Hospital Beaufort, South Carolina, including discontinuing chiropractic care.

Those that would limit access to active-duty service members only included:

  • 78th Medical Group, Robins Air Force Base, Georgia;
  • 72nd Medical Group, Tinker Air Force Base, Oklahoma;
  • 75th Medical Group, Hill Air Force Base, Utah; and
  • 66th Medical Squadron, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts.

Those that would have excluded caring for retirees and their dependents, only seeing active-duty personnel and their family members were:

  • 22nd Medical Group, McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas;
  • 341st Medical Group, Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana;
  • 28th Medical Group, Ellsworth Air Force Base, South Dakota;
  • 92nd Medical Group, Fairchild Air Force Base, Washington;
  • 90th Medical Group, Francis E. Warren Air Force Base, Wyoming;
  • 355th Medical Group, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona;
  • 9th Medical Group, Beale Air Force Base, California;
  • 45th Medical Group, Patrick Space Force Base, Florida;
  • 4th Medical Group, Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, North Carolina;
  • 460th Medical Group, Buckley Space Force Base, Colorado;
  • 27th Special Operations Medical Group, Cannon Air Force Base, New Mexico;
  • 412th Medical Group, Edwards Air Force Base, California;
  • 30th Medical Group, Vandenberg Space Force Base, California;
  • Naval Health Clinic Corpus Christi, Texas;
  • 19th Medical Group, Little Rock Air Force Base, Arkansas, (which also plans to discontinue nutrition services); and
  • 20th Medical Group, Shaw Air Force Base, South Carolina, (which also plans to discontinue nutrition services).

Facilities planning to restrict services only to active duty members and dependents who live on base included:

  • 23rd Medical Group, Moody Air Force Base, Georgia;
  • 366th Medical Group, Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho
  • 319th Medical Group, Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota; and
  • 61st Medical Squadron, Los Angeles Space Force Base, California.

Three facilities were slated to discontinue contracts for chiropractic and nutrition services, including:

  • 55th Medical Group, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska;
  • 2nd Medical Group, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana; and
  • 87th Medical Group, Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, New Jersey.

In addition, the following facilities would discontinue contracts for chiropractic services:

  • 1st Special Operations Medical Group, Hurlburt Field, Florida;
  • 10th Medical Group, U.S. Air Force Academy, Colorado; and
  • 96th Medical Group, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Seven facilities would have seen changes in services, to include:

  • David Grant Medical Center, Travis Air Force Base, California, slated to lose its labor and delivery department;
  • 42nd Medical Group, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, which would stop its educational and developmental intervention services;
  • Vilseck Army Health Clinic, Germany, which would discontinue its physical medicine and rehabilitation services;
  • Naval Health Clinic Patuxent River, Branch Health Clinic Dahlgren, Virginia, which would no longer offer radiology;
  • Army Health Clinic Munson, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, which would stop offering mammography;
  • Naval Health Clinic Lemoore, California, which would lose its operating rooms;  and
  • 7th Medical Group, Dyess Air Force Base, Texas, which would stop offering nutrition services.

And according to the proposed legislation, one facility — the Desert Sage Community Based Medical Home, part of William Beaumont Army Medical Center, at Fort Bliss, Texas — was slated for closure.

In October, then-acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. Stephen Ferrara said review of the military health system was an ongoing process and no plans for reductions or closures were set in stone.

“Like any enterprise, we’re always looking at ‘Where are we there — where do we have supply and demand mismatches?’ That’s just good governance of the system,” Ferrara said in response to a question from a reporter at a Military Officers Association of America conference.

“If you looked at any corporation that had 100 hospitals or 100 stores, they should be looking at them to say where it makes sense to dedicate their resources. That’s kind of what we’re doing, just as a matter of course, so there’s not, like, a list,” Ferrara said.

Karen Ruedisueli, MOAA’s director of government relations for health, said Tuesday that the organization, which represents active-duty and retired military personnel and family members, continues to press pressed Congress and the Defense Department to conduct “rigorous data-based analysis and mitigation planning” before shifting patients from military facilities to civilian care.

Ruedisueli first reported on the facilities list in the proposed legislation Tuesday.

“MOAA will keep members informed as this legislation moves forward and work to ensure any changes to the MHS prioritize the needs of those who have served,” Ruedisueli wrote in a blog post.

The House Armed Services Committee plans its mark up of the fiscal 2027 NDAA Thursday. It then will be forwarded to the full chamber for consideration. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to mark up its version next week but has not released a draft.

About Patricia Kime

Patricia Kime is a senior writer covering military and veterans health care, medicine and personnel issues.

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