News & Opinion

This week, House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Mike Bost (R-Ill.), and Executive Director at Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) John Vick, published the below joint opinion piece in The Hill to discuss House and Senate Republicans bill, H.R. 740, the Veterans’ Assuring Critical Care Expansions to Support Servicemembers (ACCESS) Act, commonsense legislation to build on the CHOICE and MISSION Acts to give veterans even more options in how they access their health care outside VA. Chairman Bost introduced the legislation last year alongside Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs Chairman Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and it remains a top priority for the Committee. Chairman Bost was recently on CSPAN with Mimi Geerges to discuss how the bill would expand health care access for veterans across the country – especially veterans living in rural and remote areas.

More information on H.R. 740, The Veterans' ACCESS Act, can be found here.

Chairman Bost and CVA Executive Director John Vick: Make 2026 the year veterans have more control of their health care

By Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill. and CVA Executive Director John Vick

February 2, 2026

Too often, needed reforms fall victim to political games in Washington, D.C.

Just last year, the Democrats’ record-breaking government shutdown prevented members of Congress from oversight and work on behalf of the American people. It also prevented Congress and veteran advocates from achieving meaningful progress to reform the Department of Veterans Affairs and protect and improve veterans’ health care access and choice.

Understandably, veterans feared their earned care and benefits would be unavailable, a stress that nobody who served this country needs. Luckily that wasn’t true, but as most veterans who use the VA for care will tell you, the options for care can be limited, even when the government is running, especially in rural and remote parts of the country.

But that doesn’t have to be the case. The VA should always be meeting veterans where they live to ensure that they have the health care they need, regardless of provider.

We must continue to fight to move government out of the way and give veterans less red tape and more options in how they can access their health care. Congress can and should make this the year we secure and expand access to needed care for veterans, right in our own communities.

The Veterans’ ACCESS Act would build off the success of President Trump’s 2018 VA MISSION Act which established VA’s veteran Community Care Program. Community care was a game-changer for veterans, empowering millions for the first time to use their health benefits with medical providers outside the VA for timely, nearby care when wait times at the VA were too long or appointments were too far away.

Community care makes the VA a facilitator — not just a delivery system — in each veteran’s health care journey.

However, investigations have found that VA undermined the MISSION Act’s access standards for community care eligibility since the law’s passage. The agency manipulated wait times, cutting veterans off from community care access. The VA also allowed administrators to override VA doctors’ MISSION Act-authorized decisions to refer veterans to community care and trained schedulers on how to discourage veterans from choosing community care when they asked for it.

This blatant disregard for the law during the Biden administration directly impacted community care availability and veterans’ health care access across the country. Biden bureaucrats and political appointees were more interested in protecting their bureaucratic turf than facilitating the care veterans needed.

The Veterans’ ACCESS Act would correct these glaring issues by adding transparency, putting more control in veterans’ hands, and providing some much-needed accountability for VA staff to ensure that veterans can get the health care they have earned, regardless of who is in the White House.

The bill would write the MISSION Act’s regulatory standards for accessing community care into permanent law. This would allow Congress to hold the VA accountable for offering veterans the community care choices they have earned by preventing the VA from playing fast and loose with eligibility rules.

The bill would also end wait time manipulation. It would require the VA to measure wait times from the date a veteran asks for an appointment to the date he or she receives care. VA staff would again be accountable for following the spirit and letter of the law rather than coming up with their own interpretations.

The bill goes a step further as it would require the creation of an online portal for veterans to self-schedule their own appointments, something commonplace everywhere else in our health care system but inexplicably absent when scheduling through the VA.

The Veterans’ ACCESS Act would also create a pilot program to allow veterans to access outpatient mental health and substance use care without the need for VA pre-approval. This concept, called “full choice,” would prioritize veterans receiving critical treatment as quickly as possible in the communities where they live.

Anyone who has lost a friend or loved one to the veteran suicide epidemic should be in favor of the Veterans’ ACCESS Act for this reason alone, if nothing else. It will save lives, period.

Passing House and Senate Republicans’ Veterans’ ACCESS Act would open the door to permanent, predictable access to health care for millions of veterans. That is a pressure release valve for the VA to focus on what it does best and align its resources to match demand.

Veterans need access to timely, quality care at the provider that best meets their needs. The Veterans’ ACCESS Act is the solution. Let’s make this the year we give it to them.

Mike Bost is a Marine veteran and represents Illinois’ 12th District in Congress and serves as chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. John Vick is executive director at Concerned Veterans for America and a veteran of the United States Marine Corps.