[thecodont]

Thank you very much. It looks then as if they’ve stripped off the “in time of national emergency” part and made this something perpetual, which of course can be used for any purpose they wish.

[Caesar Soze]

The "purpose" clause seems to have been descriptive, not normative; even the old law granted the Surgeon General authority to activate Reserve officers "at all times." The new form of the law protects the Ready Reserve Corps from misuse by explicitly enumerating the cases in which the RRC "shall" be subject to activation.

The new law mostly limits Ready Reserve Corps use to emergencies and training, but adds backfilling the active officers and being "available for service assignment in isolated, hardship, and medically underserved communities ... to improve access to health services." Kind of a bummer to get shipped off to an underserved community (Cicely, AK?), but one does incur certain obligations when one accepts an appointment to a federal service. Nevertheless, I would have liked to see temporal or geographic limits to active duty. Something like "180 days and 200 miles relocation, or 180 days + duration in event of war."