Senate Floor Speech
Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison
July 25, 2005 -- Page: S8806

INTRODUCTION OF AMENDMENT 1477 TO S. 1042,
THE NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2006

MRS. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, this is a very simple amendment, and it is going to add one more category to those who will be able to receive special incentive pay for signing up to come in to serve our military in the medical field. This field is oral surgery. Those who are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan and other military theaters have critical needs for oral surgery. Complex facial trauma comes with battlefield injuries.

In addition to being on the ground in mobile surgical hospital units, oral surgeons are serving on every aircraft carrier to provide essential facial reconstruction and trauma care. These surgeons are indispensable military personnel who provide a unique and necessary role in caring for our troops. Unfortunately, this valuable role is being threatened by an ever-widening compensation gap between military and civilian pay and the unlimited practice opportunities that oral surgeons have in the civilian market. With a historical retention rate of 85 percent, a loss of 15 percent, recent statistics predict the current retention rate for oral surgeons is closer to only 75 percent. Even more concerning, many of our military's oral surgeons are senior officers who could retire at any time. In fact, if all oral surgeons eligible for retirement were to retire next year, we could have a 50-percent reduction in this force.

As a means to recruit and retain essential specialties vital to maintaining the military's readiness, the military offers a variety of special pay programs to supplement a specialist's base pay and to help close the military-civilian pay gap. One such special pay program is known as incentive special pay. Available to medical personnel, incentive special pay is a yearly bonus that is designed to bring the salaries of military specialists into closer line with civilian specialists. Although it doesn't get there, it does help. Applied at different levels based on medical specialties, wartime role, and retention, incentive special pay ranges from now between $12,000 for pediatrics to $36,000 for trauma surgery specialists. Ear, nose, and throat specialists, the most comparable medical personnel to oral surgeons, are eligible for incentive special pay around $30,000.

Although oral surgeons stand the same facial trauma watches as ear, nose, and throat specialists and provide the same critical head and neck trauma care as ENTs, they are not eligible for incentive special pay. Often serving as the only head and neck specialist on aircraft carriers and smaller hospitals, our oral and maxillofacial surgeons are providing essential services for our troops in combat, services we cannot afford to lose.

Today, I ask my colleagues to join me in recognizing the important and necessary role that oral surgeons are providing our military by making these surgeons eligible for incentive special pay. We can't allow the pay disparity between military and civilian oral surgeons to become so substantial that these necessary specialists retire from the service or resign their commissions to be in private practice. I urge my colleagues to join me in allowing oral surgeons in uniform who are providing critical trauma services for our troops in the war on terror to be eligible for incentive special pay just as many other medical specialties are.