MHS funded now – those benefits key to military medical readiness

[Terri, Carrie, “The US Military Health System: Promoting Readiness And Providing Health Care,” Health Affairs vol 38, no. 8: Military Health Systems, August 2019, https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.2019.00239, accessed June 19, 2023, GDS-LL]

Governance And Funding

Executing the missions of the MHS involves multiple different people and organizations in the DoD (exhibit 1).3,12,13 Each has distinct responsibilities, but they collaborate through a governance structure to oversee programs, benefits, and services. Under each service secretary and chief, there is a military service medical department, led by a surgeon general, that trains medical personnel and maintains medical readiness.3,12 The Defense Health Agency (DHA) was established in 2013 as the designated combat support agency charged with enabling medical readiness and delivering a ready medical force during peacetime and wartime. The DHA manages the TRICARE program (described below), manages shared services (such as training and research) across the services, supports several enhanced multiservice markets (geographic areas that are served by more than one military department), and as of October 2018 administers health care in military treatment facilities.3,4,7

Exhibit 1 Governance structure of the Military Health System

Exhibit 1

SOURCE Authors’ analysis of information in Mendez BHP. Military medical care (see note 3 in text). NOTES Oversight of all military treatment facilities was recently moved to the Defense Health Agency. There are several variations of this organizational chart available; this version is the one the authors chose to use for their purposes.

The MHS is funded through a unified medical budget that includes resources for military personnel and medical military construction, as well as funding for all fixed military treatment facilities and military medical activities—including the delivery of non-war-related health care services, whose costs are covered by the Defense Health Program budget.3 In fiscal year 2018 the unified medical budget totaled $53.64 billion (9 percent of the DoD outlay), roughly two-thirds of which was for the Defense Health Program.7,8