For hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops and their families, when the Pentagon orders them to find health care off base there is none.
An NPR analysis found that 50% of active duty military installations stand within federally designated health professional shortage areas . Those are places where medical services are hard to find — commonly called “health care deserts.”
“It’s incumbent on the military to make sure that when you send a family to a location, the support and resources are available to take care of them. And that obviously includes health care,” she says. Three out of four bases in primary care deserts are also in a mental health care desert, a maternal care desert, or both.
“You do not have a robust surrounding civilian medical care,” says Sean Murphy, who served 44 years, retiring as deputy surgeon general of the Air Force. Civilians, he says, are free to choose where they live. Troops don’t get as much say about where they’re stationed.
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