During a House Appropriations Committee hearing last week, Rep. Mark Alford (R-MO) questioned VA Secretary Doug Collins about veteran healthcare.
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00:00Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking Member Wasserman Schultz, and congratulations to Mr. Secretary.
00:09Thank you for being here today.
00:11The Department of Veterans Affairs has profound responsibility to those who have served our
00:15great nation.
00:16Missouri's 4th Congressional District is home to thousands of veterans, yet my district,
00:20like many others, has heard too many stories of delayed care, bureaucratic obstacles, and
00:26a system that sometimes feels more like an adversary than an ally.
00:32In the golden age of America, I think the VA should be the gold standard of healthcare.
00:40And I think you have the same vision, Mr. Secretary.
00:43In our district, we pride ourselves on our constituent services, have a great team there.
00:49We try to provide concierge service.
00:51We look at people as clients, not just constituents.
00:56Our lead caseworker there, her name is Grace Townsend, and she's a veteran.
01:00And I have some questions that our staff wrote up here, but I came up here to be a voice for
01:04my people, and I want to be a voice today for our chief caseworker, Grace Townsend.
01:11She texted me a couple of questions to ask you.
01:13Thank you, Grace.
01:14Because she deals with this on the front line every day, sir.
01:18I would love to know when he expects the backlog of disability claims to be worked up and caught
01:23up.
01:24Well, Grace, and I'll speak to your congressman as well, thank you.
01:27One of the things is, as most of us know, 60% of your calls to your offices are constituent
01:31for calls of the VA.
01:32And I'm telling you up front, that's a failure on our part.
01:35I don't make any excuse for that.
01:36They should not have to call you to get the benefits they've earned.
01:39To speak to Grace, we've dropped that almost 21% from 260,000 to right at 200,000 in the
01:46last few months, and we're going to continue to see that go back down as we put resources
01:51and time to where it needs to go, and we're going to see that go.
01:54But also, one of the things that Grace would probably also ask about is, we do the wrong
01:57metric sometimes, and that's the end of completion.
02:00When do we actually finish it?
02:01And right now, we're way over the target of where we need to be.
02:04We're at about 135 days.
02:06So as we get the backlog down, that frees up more time to then get onto the other claims
02:10as we go.
02:11Very good.
02:12VA prescriptions are mailed to veterans with the U.S. Postal Service delays.
02:15Is there a better way for veterans to get their medication?
02:19There may be, and I think that's one of the things we're looking at in our overall projection
02:22of care and how we do that.
02:23I think this is something that the Congress has also looked at concerning basically how we
02:28deal with our generation of prescription, how we actually cut our costs.
02:34There's been some concern about the pharmacy benefit manager system.
02:37There's also been some concerns about how we go about that.
02:39It is something that's currently being looked at in our overall look at VHA.
02:42Next question from Grace Townsend.
02:44There's been a decline in receiving responses to congressional inquiries in a timely manner.
02:48This kind of ties into the first question.
02:51Liaisons are not returning responses in reasonable time frames.
02:54What used to be a 30-day turnaround time is now between three and five months.
02:59What do we do about it?
03:01Well, we're going to, that's, I appreciate her bringing to that attention.
03:04We're going to get, our staff is going to get with you afterwards, and I want to know
03:06what's happening.
03:07I want to know where she's sending the letters, and we're going to fix that.
03:09And that applies to anybody on this, this dais.
03:12If you're not getting timely response, I'm trying to right now rework our legislative affairs
03:17group that is up here on the Hill.
03:19It's something I promised in my confirmation hearing.
03:21We're going to do that.
03:22So we'll be happy to work with it and see what the problem is, and we'll make changes
03:25where necessary.
03:26With any potential cuts to employees, how many behavioral health providers could be
03:30cut?
03:31None.
03:32I want more as I can get.
03:33I think they're, but remember, one of the things we've talked about, not talked about
03:36today is, in any discussion we've had, we've had over 300,000 positions that we've
03:40exempted, and right now are currently hiring at the VA at any one time, and we need
03:45as much, and especially in the area of mental health, behavioral health, and others, to help
03:49us with our backlog, not just our backlog, but help us with our death by suicide issues,
03:55our homelessness issues, and getting back to work issues.
03:58We have a minute left.
03:59Those are Grace's questions.
04:00Mine is dealing with suicide.
04:02I lost my best friend to suicide 14 years ago.
04:06We continue to lose 6,400 veterans each year to suicide.
04:11How do we change that?
04:13Congressman, I'm sorry for your loss.
04:17I have experienced a similar loss, but also been on the phone as my years of service in
04:21the Air Force of actually talking to those veterans on the line who have come to that
04:25point in life where they want to end their life, and that's a difficult place to be,
04:28and it's not something, and we look back on it and say, how can we help?
04:31And that's a very hard feeling for the families and others.
04:34Here's the sad reality of what we're looking at right now, why we're going to start a different
04:37approach in trying to get to as many people as we can.
04:40In 2008, the number of suicides in this country by veterans have not really changed, 2008.
04:46We're still at that 6,500 to about 6,900.
04:49It's about 6,17, depending on how you want to look at the numbers, and yet in the past
04:53few years, this body, and I appreciate the work, they spent $588 million on prevention
04:57for suicide, but yet our numbers aren't changing.
05:00We spent $2.3 billion on how do we actually take care of them, and then we do counseling
05:04for those that are struggling.
05:05But we're not changing, so I've instituted a new, we're looking at it completely different.
05:09I'm talking to our folks in the field saying, how can we reach more people?
05:13Because here's the disturbing fact for all of us on this dice, is that when they look
05:17at that, that 17 number, half of those veterans who take the option of death by suicide have
05:22never had a contact with the VA.
05:24Never had a contact with the VA.
05:27So that's why I'm going on podcasts, that's why we're going to any place we can, I'm going
05:30to interviews, I'm going everywhere I can to encourage our veterans, please, please,
05:34please reach out.
05:35And if that's with VA, great, but I'm also encouraging all of our veterans to have the
05:39resources to take care of their airmen, take care of their battle buddies, take care of
05:42their wingmen, because we can't afford to lose one.
05:44We're over time, Mr. Secretary, you have a big job ahead of you, but you're going to do great.
05:49We're here for you.
05:50Thank you, sir.
05:50Thank you, sir.
05:51I yield back.