{"id":466781,"date":"2026-02-13T18:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T18:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/466781\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T18:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T18:58:10","slug":"health-care-access-a-top-complaint-among-troops-top-enlisted-leaders-tell-lawmakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/466781\/","title":{"rendered":"Health care access a top complaint among troops, top enlisted leaders tell lawmakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Top senior enlisted leaders for the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Space Force told lawmakers Wednesday that access to health care is the most substantive complaint they\u2019re hearing lately from their troops.<\/p>\n

During a hearing on quality-of-life issues before the Senate Armed Services Committee\u2019s personnel subcommittee, Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force David Wolfe cited a lack of available appointments for health care, and problems with Tricare\u2019s reimbursement rates for health care providers in communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve all seen over the length of our careers is a gradual erosion in the availability of that health care for our service members and their families,\u201d Wolfe said.<\/p>\n

This has been an issue for years, and problems with health care access have been exacerbated by new Tricare contracts<\/a> implemented last year. <\/p>\n

In spite of the time, effort and money spent on improving quality of life for service members and their families, \u201cwhen you get down to the tactical level, there\u2019s a gap,\u201d said Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force John Bentivegna. \u201cThey\u2019re not feeling it day to day. They\u2019re not feeling it around the kitchen table. They\u2019re not feeling it when they call to get an appointment. They\u2019re not feeling it when they try to get child care.\u201d<\/p>\n

The enlisted leaders talked about a range of issues, including their concerns about suicide and mental health, improvements to barracks, child care availability<\/a> and uncertainty about pay related to federal shutdowns.<\/p>\n

The services and the Defense Department have been working to increase child care slots<\/a>. But Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., raised concerns about the persistent and long waitlists for military child care, citing waitlists of 7,800 children at the end of 2025. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I come back to ask these questions a year from now, are we still going to have a waitlist that\u2019s 7,800 babies long?\u201d she asked. <\/p>\n

Warren contends the services haven\u2019t done enough to attract and keep child care workers<\/a>. The attrition rate is about 50% for child care workers in military child development centers, Warren said, and she criticized the Army, Navy and Air Force for not upgrading the pay scales by April 2025 as required by law. <\/p>\n

When asked why they leave, workers say it\u2019s low pay, according to Warren. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou have the tools from Congress. We\u2019ve already given them to you and you haven\u2019t picked them up and used them,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n

However, Wolfe and Master Chief Petty Officer of the Navy John Perryman said they\u2019ve been told that their services have already upgraded their pay scales, and it has made a difference in the staffing. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe have moved out with [using] the authorities. We are making significant progress in reducing our waitlist,\u201d Perryman said, while noting it\u2019s not okay to have 1,400 children still waiting for care.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, we\u2019ve got about 2,700 [children] with unmet need across the Air Force. And that\u2019s absolutely not where we want to be,\u201d Wolfe said. \u201cWe are committed to making sure that this number goes down over time and does not creep back up.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Warren said parents don\u2019t have time to wait. \u201cThey don\u2019t have a year that they can just set aside while they\u2019re waiting around on a 1,400 or 2,700 waitlist. They\u2019ve got to have child care now.\u201d<\/p>\n

To the Space Force and Marine Corps, she said, \u201cYou nailed it. And let\u2019s keep it up because that\u2019s what we\u2019ve got to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t say that we are a military that cares about our families if we pretend to provide child care and then we\u2019ve got a waitlist that\u2019s got 7,800 babies waiting on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book “A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families.” She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top senior enlisted leaders for the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy and Space Force told lawmakers Wednesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":292227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[11277,217158,4426,26711,29908,4427,29909,1340,11733,217159,97,252,253,109651,29910,122285],"class_list":{"0":"post-466781","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-child-care","9":"tag-child-care-workers","10":"tag-circulated-air-force-times","11":"tag-circulated-army-times","12":"tag-circulated-marine-corps-times","13":"tag-circulated-military-times","14":"tag-circulated-navy-times","15":"tag-congress","16":"tag-elizabeth-warren","17":"tag-enlisted-leaders","18":"tag-health","19":"tag-health-care","20":"tag-healthcare","21":"tag-karen-jowers","22":"tag-military-times","23":"tag-tricare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=466781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/466781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/292227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=466781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=466781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=466781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}