H.R. 6510: National Military Civilian Medical Surge Program Act of 2025

HR6510 would add a new subsection to section 1096 of title 10 to create a Military-Civilian Medical Surge Program run by the Department of Defense in collaboration with the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Day-to-day management would sit at the Institute for Defense Health Cooperation at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, or a successor center. That matters because the bill does not create a vague partnership concept; it assigns a lead department, a collaborating cabinet agency, and a specific managing office.

The bill requires a real operating network, not a pilot on paper. It says the program must include not fewer than eight locations, chosen for being operationally relevant to Defense Department missions under the National Disaster Medical System and for serving as aeromedical or other transport hubs or logistics centers in the United States. It also allows locations outside the continental United States when they are strategically or operationally relevant. Eligible partners are broad: public, private, and nonprofit health care organizations, health care institutions, health care entities, academic medical centers at four-year institutions of higher education, and hospitals. But those partners have to prove technical proficiency in high-consequence infectious disease and special pathogen preparedness, including defense, containment, management, care, and transportation.

The activation rules are expansive. Mobilization can be triggered by a declaration of a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, a public health emergency declaration under section 319 of the Public Health Service Act, a declaration of war by Congress, a contingency operation, the exercise of executive powers under the War Powers Resolution, or any other emergency or major disaster declared by the President. During a contingency operation, the Defense Health Agency would serve as a combat support agency to the relevant combatant command, which gives the military side a defined operational role when events escalate.

The bill also builds in recurring oversight. It requires semiannual coordination meetings among the Department of Defense, the military departments, the Joint Staff, the Defense Health Agency, and the Department of Health and Human Services, plus quarterly updates among those same entities. One of the two semiannual meetings each year must also include outside program partners. On top of that, the executive branch must submit an initial report not later than 180 days after the enactment of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2026, and then report annually to four committees: Senate Armed Services, Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, House Armed Services, and House Energy and Commerce. A key guardrail is that the Secretary of Defense is explicitly barred from controlling, directing, limiting, or affecting the authorities of the Secretary of Health and Human Services over the National Disaster Medical System, public health and medical preparedness, staffing levels, or resource allocation.