In 2018, when President Donald Trump signed the bipartisan VA MISSION Act, it was a promise to America’s veterans that what happened at the Phoenix VA Health Care System — where veterans were dying while waiting for their healthcare appointments — would never happen again. I think about those families who lost their veteran loved ones because they couldn’t get their earned care fast enough, and how the pain they felt should not happen in America.
The VA Community Care Program has rightfully unleashed a public-private partnership between VA and local health care providers to expand veterans’ access to care, whether it’s because VA can’t provide the care fast enough, or to meet the veterans’ individual needs. It’s that simple.
From 2022 to 2023, about 40% of all VA healthcare was community care. Veterans are satisfied with the care they receive. Community-based providers have bridged the gap in healthcare like we have never seen before — it’s a necessity for veterans to get the treatment and support we as a nation sign on the dotted line to provide to these men and women in exchange for their service in uniform.
But time and time again, during the Biden-Harris administration, rogue bureaucrats — not VA clinicians — stood in the way of veterans accessing the appointments or referrals they needed to receive care in their communities.
Last year, at the Portland VA, a senior VA employee admitted to my oversight staff that they were actively trying to keep healthcare in-house at VA, instead of granting community care referrals in accordance with the law. At the Buffalo VA, bureaucrats delayed and eventually canceled a cancer patient’s radiation therapy referrals, which caused him debilitating pain before dying from cancer. Cases like these directly undercut the intent of the community care program. I have one message for bureaucrats who think they get to determine what type of healthcare veterans have access to: the MISSION Act is not optional; it’s the law. And it’s time we make that message perfectly clear.
That is why, along with my fellow Republicans, I am leading H.R. 740, the Veterans’ Assuring Critical Care Expansions to Support Servicemembers Act. We believe that if a government program effectively delivers timely, quality healthcare to our veterans, whether that’s inside or outside VA, we should not only protect it but expand it to include even more healthcare services.
The Veterans’ ACCESS Act would codify the standard of care for veterans seeking care in their community, increase access to life-saving treatment programs for veterans with mental health conditions or addiction, and expand the list of criteria VA is required to take into account when determining whether it is in a veteran’s best medical interest to refer them to the community, to include a veteran’s personal preference and the continuity of the delivery of their individual healthcare. The Veterans’ ACCESS Act would put veterans’ healthcare decisions with the patient and their doctor, rather than in the hands of a VA bureaucrat.
Democrats will claim that my bill is an attempt to privatize VA healthcare, or they’ll say that we should be investing more money into VA’s healthcare system, to only save community care for the most egregious situations. But that’s not fair to the one person for whom VA was created: the veteran.
The reality is that VA’s healthcare footprint should undoubtedly keep pace with the private sector healthcare industry and population shifts so that it can deliver care. The facts are twofold: one, in most places, VA is not designed to be an all-encompassing healthcare provider and two, VA cannot be where every veteran lives. And that’s OK. If a private hospital or doctor can provide a veteran with faster, better care that meets their needs and is closer to home, they should be able to.
Community care properly bridges that gap for millions of veterans. Anyone who doesn’t understand this reality should step outside the DC beltway, or outside the major city they call home, and visit the rural parts of America where the closest VA facility is over an hour away.
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When VA inserts itself as the sole decision maker and plays politics with veterans’ health, people get hurt, cancer patients can’t get their treatment, and families spend more time arguing with bureaucrats than focusing on living their lives.
I want to fix that to keep pushing VA forward. Community care isn’t privatization; it’s thinking outside the box to change the way healthcare works. That’s what I’m focused on, not yelling from the sidelines. I know President Trump and a majority of Americans share my commitment to upholding the promise we have made to the men and women who have served by ensuring our veterans have the healthcare they have earned — not going backward to protect government bureaucracy. Let’s get it done.
Mike Bost is a Marine Corps veteran and the Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.
