The State of VA Health Care

There are 22 million veterans in the United States. The VA provides 6.5 million veterans a year with health care. The VA has got to be accountable. It has also got to be efficient. We have also got to ascertain what the problems facing the veterans community and their families are and do everything we can to make sure that the VA is on the kind of position that it needs to be to address those problems. Of the 2 million men and women who served our country, put their lives on the line in Afghanistan and Iraq, studies suggest that 20 to 30 percent have come home with PTSD or TBI. Simply stated, that means those wars have created some 500,000 mentally wounded American veterans, and as a result, very serious problems regarding suicide, substance abuse, inability to hold onto a job, divorce, emotional problems for the kids. Since fiscal year 2006, the number of veterans receiving specialized mental health treatment has risen from just over 927,000 veterans to more than 1.4 million in fiscal year 2013. That is 49,315 outpatient mental health appointments provided by the VA per day.