Under the Trump administration, the White House Medical Unit — a joint Defense Department team that provides medical care for the president, vice president and family members and also manages health services for certain high-level officials — sent ineligible staff members to military hospitals for specialty care and surgeries, the DoD inspector general has found.
The medical unit also dispensed hundreds of free prescriptions, including controlled substances, to people in the White House, the DoD inspector general said in a report released Jan. 8.
The federal watchdog determined that the unit, comprised of military medical personnel and DoD civilians and led by an officer with a paygrade of O-6, had received little to no oversight from the Defense Health Agency or the military services for years despite having its own pharmacy and referring White House staff for care at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland, Fort Belvoir Community Hospital in Virginia, and elsewhere.
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According to the report, from 2017 through 2020, the Defense Department “funded and resourced care for an average of 6 to 20” non-DoD beneficiary patients per week at no cost to them — medical appointments and services that then were unavailable to active-duty military personnel, their family members or retirees.
The DoD IG launched the…
