The End of Geriatric Government?

Daniel Boguslaw, "Aging Members of Congress Refuse to Disclose Details of Their Top Secret Hospital"

The Office of the Attending Physician gives politicians nearly unlimited medical care for about $54 a month.

After a presidential election that saw an 82-year-old commander in chief unable to complete sentences in a debate or instill confidence in the public that he could carry out his duties, elected leaders in Congress are faring no better.

In the past two months alone, 82-year-old Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX) was discovered to be living in an assisted-living facility with a dementia ward in her final months in office; 74-year-old Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) won a high-profile leadership position on the House Oversight Committee after revealing he is battling highly terminal esophageal cancer; 82-year-old Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) fell twice on Capitol Hill just months after blacking out during a press conference; 84-year-old former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) fell and broke her hip in Luxembourg; and 76-year-old Rep. John Larson (D-CT) appeared to suffer a stroke on the House floor. (Larson’s staff has said it was a bad reaction to a new medication.)

What has eluded attention is the highly secretive hospital, housed on Capitol Hill and funded by taxpayers, that provides both emergency and primary care to an aging political class, which some have come to describe as a gerontocracy. It also runs classified programs known only to some members of Congress.

In 2023, Congress designated $4.2 million to the Office of the Attending Physician (OAP), a Navy-staffed hospital with multiple branches spread across Capitol Hill. The current attending physician, Dr. Brian Monahan, who serves as a rear admiral in the Navy, oversees a staff of dozens of Navy doctors, nurses, and technicians whose primary responsibility is providing care to members of Congress and the Supreme Court.

And while the office has long justified its existence by providing emergency care for an increasingly brittle class of politicians, it also quietly serves as a dirt-cheap clinic for elected officials, some of whom have voted to slash Medicare and Medicaid and abolish the Affordable Care Act, potentially taking coverage away from tens of millions of Americans.

Meanwhile, the OAP is more responsive than any treatment available to normal people. When McConnell fell recently, he emerged within hours in a wheelchair. It’s unknown precisely whether it came from the Office of the Attending Physician, but it’s a safe bet, because it takes the average Medicare patient a face-to-face examination and a written prescription from the provider, plus a Medicare Part B application from your local Social Security office, access to an approved durable medical equipment supply store, in some cases a home evaluation, and a co-pay of 20 percent of the cost to secure such equipment.

McConnell’s office did not respond to a request for comment about whether he pays into the OAP program, or whether his wheelchair came from the OAP.

According to a Congressional Research Service report from last year, it costs a member of Congress just $650 a year for nearly unlimited medical care. That includes not only access to on-site X-rays, lab work, and physical therapy, but also free referrals to Washington-area military hospitals, which provide the best care in the country free to members, also on the taxpayer’s dime.

This subsidized concierge service is separate from a congressperson’s insurance coverage. But at $54 a month for top-class care with no other co-pays or deductibles, it’s a pretty good deal for the men and women who dictate what kind of options the rest of us have.

In an attempt to understand more details about the functioning of the OAP, the Prospect requested comment from every member of the House Committee on Administration, which oversees the program.

Every committee member—Republican Reps. Bryan Steil (R-WI), Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Dr. Greg Murphy (R-NC), Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Mike Carey (R-OH), Laurel Lee (R-FL), and Mary Miller (R-IL), and Democratic Reps. Joe Morelle (D-NY), Terri Sewell (D-AL), Norma Torres (D-CA), and Julie Johnson (D-TX)—did not respond to a request for comment on the full list of members who paid for OAP services, and the 2024 and 2025 cost of those services.

Perhaps part of the committee’s hesitation is due to the fact that over the past ten years, local Washington pharmacists have said they fill prescriptions for things like Alzheimer’s drugs written by staff in the Office of the Attending Physician. In addition, three current and former Hill staffers confirmed to the Prospect that there are multiple sitting members struggling with symptoms of dementia and taking medication to combat its effects.

ASIDE FROM THE OFFICE OF THE ATTENDING PHYSICIAN, members of Congress have access to Obamacare health plans. In 2017, Jeffrey Frank detailed the multi-decade fight that led to Congress losing access to the cushy Federal Employee Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), a similar but better health care marketplace that Obamacare was based on. Despite a Democratic-led push to extend the federal marketplace to all citizens in the 1990s, the silver-tongued whisperings of Newt Gingrich and industry lobbyists convinced President Clinton to abandon his health care reform efforts. After the midterm wash in 1994, Gingrich and the GOP managed to deprive tens of millions of Americans of health care for another decade-plus.

As Frank writes, after the passage of the Affordable Care Act, “the comfortable choices that were available for more than fifty years were suddenly transferred to the slightly murky passageways of Obamacare. And it follows that, if the Affordable Care Act is repealed, members of Congress would be able to return to the federal plan that they, like millions of federal employees, were so fond of. Twenty million other Americans won’t.”

Whispers that the GOP’s war on Obamacare is secretly being motivated by their desire to return to the FEHBP lose some of their strength when one considers the fact that for much less per month than the average cellphone bill, they can receive free health care from the best doctors in the world.

As ABC reported in 2009:

Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin—one of 15 medical doctors in Congress—is the only member of either the House or Senate who has no health insurance coverage. Kagen, a Democrat and advocate for health care reform, said he turned down the plan he was offered through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.

“I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. I respectfully decline. Until you can make the same offer to everyone that I have the honor of representing, I just don’t think it’s fair,’” Kagen said he told the congressional staffer who reviewed the plan with him in 2006.

But while Kagen has touted in campaign advertisements and news interviews that he has no health insurance coverage, he has openly admitted he used OAP services. In January, for example, he paid more than $4,000 out of pocket for outpatient arthroscopic knee surgery. After the procedure, he said, he used the attending physician’s office and staff to assist him with physical therapy.

Those who have worked at the OAP, however, said the services are far more advanced than what is available at most companies. One former staff member, who asked not to be named, described the OAP as “the best health care on the planet.”

As Elon Musk gears up to make good on the long-held Republican promise of wresting not only Obamacare, but also Medicare and Medicaid, from millions, he should also pay attention to the OAP, and consider giving members of Congress a taste of their own medicine.

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