After downsizing health care for years, Pentagon says medical readiness was a casualty

Dr. Todd Rasmussen stands in his home office in Rochester, Minn. He is a former combat surgeon who did six tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Jenn Ackerman for NPR)

The Air Force put Todd Rasmussen through medical school, and he planned to serve a while and then go into private practice at the renowned Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. He started his military career as a vascular surgeon in Northern Virginia, a few weeks before Sept. 11, 2001.

"You could sort of see smoke from the Pentagon. I thought, boy, my military career as a surgeon ... it's gonna be vastly different than what I expected," he recalls.