Breaking Down Barriers: Getting Veterans ACCESS to Lifesaving Care
2025-03-25
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Source: Congress.gov
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Transcript
Good afternoon. This oversight hearing for the Subcommittee on Health will now come to order. Before I begin my remarks, I would like to highlight some numbers. First, $20.9 billion. That's the amount the Veterans Health Administration received in 2001 at the onset of the global war on terror. In that same year, an estimated 16 to 17 veterans took their own lives every single day. Second, 121 billion. That's the amount the VHA received in 2024. After nearly two decades of war, an entire generation of veterans now rely on the system built to care for them. 17. That's the number of veterans our nation loses to suicide every single day in 2024. That number could be higher as the VA does not include veterans who lose their lives to overdoses in its official suicide statistics. The numbers tell a clear story. VA's problem is not a lack of resources. VA's problem is not a lack of funding. VA's problem is not a lack of staffing. VA's problem is not that Congress has failed to provide what it needs to care for those who have served. Since the beginning of the global war on terror, VA's budget has increased an incredible 479%. Yet the number of veterans we lose every day has remained approximately the same. And these are just the suicides that we know about or that the VA counts. Some seem to believe that the solution is straightforward. Continue to invest in VA staffing, expand services, grow the system. But the numbers do not lie. If money alone could solve this problem, it would have been solved long ago. No, the VA does not have a resource problem. It has an access and a process problem. It's a blatant failure of the VA to adapt to the needs of the very people it was created to serve. VA's current processes are not designed to provide veterans care when and where they need it. Instead, veterans are left waiting.
navigating delays, bureaucratic red tape, and systemic inefficiencies that create barriers rather than breaking them down. While I believe that Congress and the VA has taken some necessary steps to increase access, it's not enough. We continue to hear from veterans who are turned away from the life-saving care that they need. Some are denied residential treatment because they have not previously sought VA care. As if a veteran in crisis should have predicted their need for help years in advance, Others are told they cannot access community care unless a VA facility fails to meet a 20-day threshold, forcing them to wait even when immediate alternative options exist. And some are simply lost in the system, bounced from program to program, expected to navigate a maze of bureaucracy while struggling with the very mental health conditions that make the process overwhelming. In one particular case, a veteran suffering from severe alcohol withdrawal who was seeking admission into a residential rehabilitation treatment program in the community was outright denied because the VA stated they had a bed available 100 miles away. Had the leadership at that community facility not stepped up, the VA would have effectively forced that veteran into homelessness. That's why I support Chairman Bost's Veterans Access Act, which takes long overdue steps towards fixing these issues. The Veterans Access Act recognizes that the goal should be to protect veterans, not VA bureaucracy, and it cuts through VA's arbitrary restrictions by allowing more veterans to seek the care they desperately need in the community when the VA cannot provide it. VA claims that there is no wrong door for veterans seeking care. Yet we continue to hear about doors locked, doors hidden, and doors that simply do not exist. It's time we stop making excuses and start making changes, real changes that put veterans first. Today we will hear firsthand from those who can speak to these process failures and those who can help us fix them.
The cost of inaction is too high. Thank you all for being here. I look forward to today's discussion. With that, I yield to ranking member Brownlee for any opening remarks she may have. Thank you, Madam Chair.
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