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WASHINGTON, D.C. - U.S. Rep. William Delahunt is urging Pentagon officials to drop plans to reduce staffing at the Hanscom Air Force Base medical clinic in Bedford.
“I am very concerned that this will result in thousands of retirees and dependents of active-duty members being barred from accessing military health care at the base,” the Quincy Democrat said last week in a letter to Air Force Maj. Gen. Daniel J. Darnell.
Delahunt told Darnell that restricting health care at Hanscom would hurt the medical readiness of Army and Air National Guard troops being deployed as well as servicemen returning from assignments.
“We should be expanding access to military medical services, not restricting access based on budgetary concerns,” Delahunt wrote.
Mark Forest, a spokesman for Delahunt, said yesterday that the congressman recently learned that the military is considering reducing the 161 member medical staff at the Hanscom clinic and providing services only to active-duty personnel.
Forest said rumors of medical-care cutbacks despite the war raging in Iraq have been circulating with the military community.
“We are trying to get some clarity about what is going on,” he said. “We are concerned about restricting access to dependents and retirees. When we first heard there were talks about downsizing, we didn’t believe them.”
In his letter, Delahunt pointed out that the clinic at Hanscom is the only major military medical facility in Massachusetts.
“Those retirees and family members that would be shut out of the clinic will now have to drive out of state to access health care at a military facility,” Delahunt wrote.
Hanscom is home to the 66th Air Base Wing and headquarters of the Air Force Electronic Systems System, which gathers and analyzes information about potentially hostile forces.
The base supports about 100,000 retirees, their spouses and beneficiaries living in New England and New York.
The Veterans Administration is also reportedly considering plans to consolidate medical services that would affect veterans seeking care at Veterans Administration hospitals in Brockton, Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury.
In 2004, Veterans Administration officials proposed closing those hospitals and the Hanscom clinic and building a hospital in Boston. The plan was part of a nationwide consolidation aimed at improving efficiency and cutting costs.
Veterans, advocates and lawmakers criticized the proposal.
The Veterans Administration had predicted that the demand for health care would drop over the next two decades because of a shrinking Boston area veteran population.
To read Delahunt's letter please click here.
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