Mr. Chairman and members of this distinguished subcommittee, I appreciate the opportunity to testify before you today on the adequacy of funding of the Defense Health Program for fiscal year 1999. I am accompanied here today by Bill Lynn, Comptroller and Dr. Sue Bailey, Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs. The President and the Department of Defense are deeply committed to ensuring the medical readiness of our forces and providing high quality health care to our service members, their families, and retirees.
Health care is a major quality of life factor and is a critical component of military readiness.
Patient care is our top priority and we will ensure that we meet this commitment. A robust military health care system is vital to the lives of our service members when they are put in harm's way, and is a major quality of life factor for our active duty members and their families. This is an important time for military medicine as it carries out both of these missions. With respect to medical readiness, we are implementing strong force health protection measures to guard our men and women in uniform from environmental, occupational, and endemic disease threats, as well as from the nuclear, biological and chemical warfare threats that are a reality of today's world. The Department's Anthrax Vaccine Immunization Program, through which the total force will be immunized against the threat of anthrax, is a prime commitment of the high priority we are placing on protecting our troops against weapons of mass destruction.