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Today, Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa), the Chairwoman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health, delivered the following opening remarks, as prepared, at the start of the Committee’s third oversight hearing on the Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA) Community Care Program (CCP) and its ability to provide veterans with timely access to urgent mental health care, substance use disorder treatment, and residential rehabilitation treatment programs. To include discussion on whether current admission and referral processes and policies effectively serve veterans in crisis – or if they impose barriers that could delay – or deny critical care.

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 is 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 and an entire generation of veterans now relying 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 VA does not include the veterans we lose to overdoses, in its official suicide statistics.

These numbers tell a clear story.

VA’s problem is not a lack of resources.

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 the same—and these are just the suicides we know about or 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, VA does not have a resource problem— It has an access and process problem. It is a blatant failure of 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 Congress and VA have taken some necessary steps to increase access, it is not enough. We continue to hear from veterans who are turned away from the lifesaving care 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 that process overwhelming.

In one particular case, a veteran suffering from severe alcohol withdrawals who was seeking admission into a Residential Rehabilitation Treatment Program in the community was outright denied because VA stated that they had a bed available…100 miles away.

Had the leadership at that community facility not stepped up, VA would have effectively forced that veteran into homelessness. That is why I support Chairman Bost’s Veterans’ ACCESS Act, which takes long overdue steps toward 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 VA cannot provide it.

VA claims 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 is 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 the Ranking Member for her opening statement.