On MISSION Act’s Anniversary, VA and Congress Still Undermine Veterans’ Health

With Memorial Day last week and June being PTSD Awareness Month, veterans around the country are feeling the weight of war and its repercussions. I’ve spent time recently thinking about what we as veterans sacrifice for this country – our physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing – and how our country and its institutions honor those sacrifices. 

Millions struggle with mental and physical care and turn to the Department of Veterans Affairs as a desperately needed support system. 

Sadly, at a time when the VA could be listening to veterans and opening the doors to innovative, quality, life-saving care, the department is choosing to save itself instead. 

In June 2018, then-President Trump signed the VA MISSION Act, a landmark law that empowers veterans with more options in their health care through their VA benefits. Lawmakers of both parties supported the law, as did all the major veterans service organizations, and millions of veterans around the country. 

But President Biden’s VA has been undermining and chipping away at the law, piece by piece. Congressional oversight has had little to no impact and hasn’t dissuaded the VA from continuing to undermine the law. 

Internal documents that the VA had to be sued under the Freedom of Information Act to release show concerted efforts to keep veterans from accessing community care providers. The MISSION Act created this network of non-VA providers, which is covered by VA benefits and has been a gamechanger for veterans around the country. But the VA sees it as a threat. 

Trainings and policy documents note ways to steer veterans away from asking for community care and create loopholes that put veterans’ health decisions in the hands of bureaucrats, not veterans or their doctors. 

The conspiring against veterans goes deeper.

A recently leaked secret VA document, known as the “Red Team” report, details ways in which the VA will attempt to keep veterans inside the VA, by whatever means necessary. The report suggests weaponizing telehealth to get around the wait time standards that were designed to allow community care access when waits for in-person care were too long. The report also seeks to bring veterans who have used community care back into the VA system even if they like their current provider and it disrupts their continuity of care. 

But most disturbing is the Red Team report idea to “mitigate” costs of community care by limiting the emergency or mental health care veterans can receive in the community. All emergency or mental health would have to go through VA first, despite what the veteran wants or needs. 

How is that a safe or effective way to manage mental health? 

A veteran in physical or mental health crisis can’t be tied to some false bureaucratic benevolence. They need help immediately. 

How do the Democrats respond to what’s going on at the VA? They continually assist the VA in undermining the VA MISSION Act and veterans’ access to care choices. 

Sen. Jon Tester, who sells himself as a champion of veterans’ issues, has led the charge in shutting down pieces of the MISSION Act, a law he voted and takes credit for by the way, that would streamline and update VA facilities. He’s also introduced new legislation that worsens mental health access for veterans through new bureaucratic hoops, an interesting move for someone from a rural state that already has limited mental health resources.

Sen. Tester and fellow Democrats all directly support the VA’s toxic internal ideology and policy to protect the bureaucracy first and serve the veteran second. 

Any bill, introduced by any member of Congress who attempts to chip away at the VA MISSION Act, community care, or a veteran-first model of care should be considered dead on arrival. 

As we approach six years since the VA MISSION Act’s signing, veterans’ voices are crucial to take into account. Vets are voting with their feet, and community care is growing in popularity with more than 40% of veterans getting community care and referrals rising 15-20% each year. Despite the Biden Administration’s best attempts to keep veterans trapped in their union-fueled socialist health care system. Veterans clearly want more choices, and theirs is the feedback Congress need consider 

The veteran mental health crisis doesn’t need to continue. Congress and the VA can truly commit themselves to ensure veterans have open doors to care when and where they need it by demanding the VA MISSION Act is upheld and introducing legislation that strengthens veterans access to care. 

If your member of Congress can’t do the work of protecting veterans’ health care, your member of Congress should be out of a job come November. 

Russ Duerstine is executive director of Concerned Veterans for America and a veteran of the United States Air Force.