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The importance of maintaining a strong directcare system during peacetime also was voiced by the Air Force Surgeon General, Lt. Gen. Charles B. Green, MD, at a recent congressional hearing.
 “As we come out of the war, one of my major concerns is that, because we have downsized our hospitals so significantly, that we need to be able to maintain these skill sets of these folks who take care of trauma to do this critical care that has been so vital,” he said. “So we have been doing a lot of partnerships with local universities. … The other side of this is that, because of the war and the focus on deployments, we also need to make sure we are offering the kind of care that everyone wants to come back to. And so we are looking at how we bring people back into our system to keep our hospitals as busy and robust as we can. We know that physicians who have a busy practice are more likely to stay with us.”
Kathryn Beasley, a retired Navy captain  who serves as deputy director of government relations at the MOAA, told U.S. Medicine that her organization will be closely watching to see how the proposed budget could affect DoD’s ability to maintain a strong direct-care system and medical training capabilities.