"Go civvy its simple, its easy, its fast"
You must be joking! What planet do you live on??
For all the jokes about military medics and doctors, no one else in the country has their own dedicated medical service. With staff that understand the job and work ethos of the patients. With no whinging civvies clogging up the waiting rooms wanting a doctor's note for a week "on the sick" because they haven't used up their allocation of work sick days yet this year. Or for those who like to worry about these things, no asylum seekers leapfrogging to the front of the queue.
The AMS is undermanned and overworked, and not perfect, but the medics and doctors care about soldiers and will be there to save your life if you need them.
Regarding the original article in the Scotland on Sunday - it's highly misleading. There have been several hundred expressions of interest in the golden hellos, but of course no one has been recruited yet - the scheme has only just been announced!
We are NOT supposed to be able to man 13 Field Hospitals - that completely fails to understand the cadre system of the TA Field Hospitals.
Defence Medical Service planning assumptions have always assumed the use of reservists in the case of a large deployment.
As for Dr John Ferguson's 10% casualty rate, I'm not sure what staff course he's attended, but it isn't one that I recognise. Without going into details, the expected casualty rates are calculated for every option as part of the Estimate process by the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ). And I can assure you that, rather than sending insufficient beds, the only criticisms I've heard from people who actually know what they're talking about have been the other way around - are we over egging the medical support?
And while it's true that we are badly undermanned in some key trades, the undermanning figures often look worse than they are because the requirement is based on large-scale, everything-we've-got warfighting, which is not what is happening.
The medical services are regularly knocked in peacetime, but would you fancy fighting a war without them? And has there ever been a war or conflict where they've let you down? Ask anyone who was treated in the 'Red and Green Life Machine' in the Falklands. And ask yourself why the RAMC has more Victoria Crosses than any other organisation, including two of the three nutters who won it twice!