OPINION:
Two weeks ago, I sat in a Veterans Affairs waiting room for a scheduled appointment. Next to me was a fellow veteran who had already been waiting for 90 minutes to be checked in.
He got up, walked down the hall and found someone to ask why he was still waiting. The answer: Nobody was coming to that waiting room to check anyone in.
He was one person in one waiting room, but his story is the same for more than 550,000 other veterans still waiting for VA promises. Do the multiplication, and you get a disturbing number.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins took office in February 2025, pledging to “deliver timely access to care and benefits for every eligible veteran, family member, caregiver and survivor” and to put veterans “at the center of everything VA does, focusing relentlessly on customer service and convenience.”
In some ways, he has succeeded. The VA has cut its claims backlog — those pending more than 125 days — by 72% since January 2025. The backlog fell below 100,000 for the first time since 2020 and now sits below 75,000.
Still, the backlog is not the whole story. More than 550,000 total claims remain pending, and speed is not the same thing as accuracy.
Rep. Morgan Luttrell of Texas, chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs subcommittee on disability assistance and memorial affairs, said it plainly at a recent congressional hearing: “The same errors keep happening, leaving some veterans with delays or incorrect decisions. This is a systematic failure.”
In February, reflecting on his first year, Mr. Collins said that under the VA’s current structure, “the care is suffering.”
My brother has lived that suffering. He has the same serious heart condition I do — the one I spent two years and thousands of dollars fighting the VA to get treated after retiring from the Army in 2016 after 30 years of service.
The VA reviewed his case and told him, “We can do what you want.” That was more than six months ago. What they left off was when they would do it.
He is now seeking care at the Cleveland Clinic because the VA’s spoken promise has not been translated into actual care.
That is the slog of bureaucratic approval: File a claim, then wait. The system decides whether a veteran deserves what he or she was already promised.
Yet another bureaucracy is now layered beneath approvals: the bureaucracy of access. A critical part of that is where the care is received and how far a veteran has to travel to reach it.
Approximately 30% of veterans — more than 5 million former service members — have service-related disabilities. For them, travel is no easy thing. Disabled veterans cannot just jump into the car and go; many need a friend or family member to assist or accompany them. This creates further unnecessary delays.
I will soon drive 90 minutes each way to reach a VA hospital for my own appointments. The VA cannot build a facility on every corner, which I understand, but the answer to the geography and access problem already exists and has for decades.
Give veterans a healthcare coverage card they can use at any hospital or specialist of their choice. Give them a card that travels with them, not through the bureaucracy.
The VA can still coordinate care, maintain oversight and manage costs, but a veteran should not have to drive 90 minutes — or wait 90 minutes in a room where no one comes — to access benefits they have earned through service.
Secretary Collins, you have made genuine progress, and for that I am grateful. You said yourself that veteran care is improving. Yet my brother has not seen it in getting an appointment, the veteran in that waiting room did not see it when he was trying to check in, and I have not seen it in being able to get to a doctor within a reasonable drive.
The card would fix all these problems.
The data on veterans’ healthcare may be looking better, but neither the veteran nor the waiting room has received the memo. Our “Now Serving” number should never be “keep waiting.”
• Walter “Woody” Woodring is a retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army and Army National Guard. He lives in Maryland.
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