Sens. Mark Kelly, D-Arizona, and Mike Rounds, R-South Dakota, introduced a bill on Wednesday that seeks to help military medics and corpsmen transition to civilian healthcare careers.
The Medic Education and Deployment into Civilian (MEDIC) Careers Act of 2025 attempts to eliminate bureaucratic and credential barriers that make it difficult for military-trained healthcare workers to get a job in civilian healthcare.
This bill will standardize its military medic training to align more closely with civilian credentialing requirements. In addition, the bill will look into the military’s current transition programs for military health workers.
The MEDIC Careers Act would also investigate the potential impact of states refining their equivalencies between military training and civilian health care licenses.
Furthermore, this bill would provide an update to the Department of Defense’s Health Care Workforce Preparedness and Response Pilot Program, which supports civilian health care providers and service members in hiring, training and retention efforts while also leveraging Government Issue benefits.
This bill would provide $5 million to this program annually from 2026 to 2033.
Kelly and Rounds introduced this bill as America faces a future of not having enough nurses. The U.S. Department of Labor projects America will have a nursing shortage of 275,000 workers by 2030.
With this projected shortage, over 173,000 healthcare workers are currently serving in the military, according to Kelly’s press release.
Many of these workers are military medics who serve in combat zones, hospitals and clinics. Kelly’s press release noted when healthcare personnel leave the military, they often have to undergo the same training, which slows down their entry into the civil workforce.
