Sam Farr: “Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Congresswoman Davis, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of, obviously…”

“Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Congresswoman Davis, for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of, obviously, the legislation I have authored, but I really appreciate the statements that have been made here about General Gourley. He was a very special human being--tall- statured, an incredible soldier, and a retiree who kind of brought together the retiree community of the military along the entire Monterey Peninsula. We still have nine military missions, including the Naval Postgraduate School, the Defense Language Institute, at which all the languages of the world are taught, the Manpower Development Center, Fort Hunter Liggett, Camp Roberts, and so on. So we have a lot of military there. He recognized that not only did the Active Duty soldiers--men and women in uniform who have a clinic at the Defense Language Institute-- have to live off of TRICARE but, really, so did their spouses and children. A lot of the doctors in the community wouldn't accept TRICARE because the reimbursement rates were so low. So here were underserved populations. There was a widow population of military retirees, who, after the base closed and the hospital closed and where there was space available, they weren't really familiar with how to use TRICARE or how to find TRICARE doctors. There was the Active Duty military, and then there was this incredible veterans community.…”