National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Chair, looking at this amendment, if you just boil it down, what it is doing is degrading the scope of coverage for military servicemembers covered by TRICARE for themselves and their dependents.
What we are doing is we are basically saying if you wear the uniform of this country, your level of insurance is going to be less than Americans in the civilian sector or in other forms of employment-based insurance.
We have been fighting on the Armed Services Committee to raise the level of coverage and to create parity with the civilian sector as a way of recruiting people in the military. This goes backward.
This will be a first for the NDAA to degrade the TRICARE health insurance coverage for military members, people who wear the uniform of this country.
Oppose this amendment.
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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Chair, I claim the time in opposition to this amendment.
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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Chair, I will begin by injecting some facts into this discussion.
We debated this measure in the Armed Services Committee. The amendment was adopted to extend the feasibility study from the U.S. Center of Excellence at Walter Reed Hospital, which was created by the NDAA in 2009, to help maybe advise the Ukrainians in terms of setting up their own center of excellence within their own country to treat victims of traumatic brain injury and also other horrible injuries that are happening in real time.
There were drone attacks on Kyiv last night where four Ukrainians were injured severely, and when committee members had a chance to actually vote on this, the amendment was adopted 49-10, which was actually the largest bipartisan vote of the entire markup for this year's NDAA.
I want to be clear: This does not establish a center of excellence in Ukraine. It basically talks about the feasibility of advising healthcare officials within Ukraine in terms of best practices from the over decade of experience that we have at Walter Reed, which has helped thousands of U.S. veterans who suffered TBI in the Middle East.
I applaud the gentlewoman's constituent, who is doing great work. Some of those individuals do it on their own, in terms of setting up their own services, but there is no question that this center has provided great direct healthcare for people suffering from this wound of war. It has also helped create best practices as we have learned more about this type of injury because of the hard experience that took place in Iraq and Afghanistan.
There are probably, as calculated now, well over 100,000 Ukrainians who are wounded and suffering injuries, civilians in most cases, from indiscriminate bombing by Russia, who is conducting an illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. This is the ultimate, in terms of humanitarian assistance to victims of war, to victims of aggression, using, again, the well-honed skills and healthcare expertise of our country to help an ally who is fighting the fight in terms of protecting their democratic self-rule from an invasion by Russia.
We had very strong bipartisan support to support this effort. I hope that we will vote in a resounding fashion for political reasons, for military reasons, and for just simple decency to help people who have suffered injuries.
Madam Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Kamlager-Dove).
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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Chair, may I inquire as to the time remaining.
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Mr. COURTNEY. Madam Chair, again, really quickly, I would just note that this builds on an amendment which was adopted in last year's NDAA to establish a partnership between the DOD and Ukraine. Again, that is still sort of working its way through the system.
Again, this is really about trying to explore the value of the Center of Excellence for TBI, which, again, I think, is something that all of us should support just for simple decency reasons.
Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.
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