From World Net Daily

President Obama’s recently passed health-care reform legislation includes a surprise for many Americans – a beefing up of a U.S. Public Health Service reserve force and expectations that it respond on short notice to “routine public health and emergency response missions,” even involuntarily.

According to Section 5210 of HR 3590, titled “Establishing a Ready Reserve Corps,” the force must be ready for “involuntary calls to active duty during national emergencies and public health crises.”

The health-care legislation adds millions of dollars for recruitment and amends Section 203 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 204), passed July 1, 1944, during Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency. The U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps is one of the seven uniformed services in the U.S. However, Obama’s changes more than double the wording of the Section 203 and dub individuals who are currently classified as officers in the Reserve Corps commissioned officers of the Regular Corps.

The U.S. Public Health Service website describes its commissioned corps as “an elite team of more than 6,000 full-time, well-trained, highly qualified public health professionals dedicated to delivering the nation’s public health promotion and disease prevention programs and advancing public health science.”

According to its mission page, officers of the commissioned corps may:

• Provide essential public health and health care services to underserved and disadvantaged populations

• Prevent and control injury and the spread of disease

• Ensure that the nation’s food supply, drinking water, drugs, medical devices and environment are safe

• Conduct and support cutting-edge research for the prevention, treatment and elimination of disease, health disparities and injury

• Work with other nations and international agencies to address global health challenges

• Provide urgently needed public health and clinical expertise in response to large-scale local, regional and national public health emergencies and disasters

Members are trained to respond to public health situations and national emergency events, such as natural disasters, disease outbreaks and terrorist attacks.

Read the rest of the column.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 31st, 2010 at 10:29 am and is filed under Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.