#195: Setting The Record Straight - Secretary Of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins

There is a steady stream of headlines shaping how Veterans view the Department of Veterans Affairs https://www.va.gov/. Disability benefits are being cut. The VA is being privatized. Programs are disappearing. That is the narrative. But is it the reality? In a social media environment driven by clicks, likes, and engagement, information spreads fast, and too often no one stops to ask whether it is actually true. When it comes to healthcare, benefits, and the systems Veterans rely on, the facts matter. In this episode, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins https://department.va.gov/staff-biographies/douglas-a-collins/ joins Fran Racioppi https://www.linkedin.com/in/francisracioppijr/ to address those concerns directly and bring clarity to what is actually happening inside the VA. This is not a surface level conversation. It’s a direct response to the questions Veterans are asking right now. We break down the proposed disability rating regulation enforcement that rocked the Veteran community, what it was intended to do, how it was misinterpreted, and why it was withdrawn within days. We discuss the rollout of the VA’s electronic health record modernization, what’s working, what still needs to improve, and how it will impact care moving forward. Secretary Collins also addresses the reality of community care and the claims surrounding privatization, clarifying how the VA will always deliver and fund care for Veterans. We talk about workforce challenges, hiring, and the responsibility to ensure Veterans are receiving timely and effective support with a right-sized VA staffing level. The conversation also focuses on one of the most critical issues facing the Veteran community: suicide prevention. With the majority of Veterans not currently engaged with the VA, the approach must evolve. Outreach must expand, accountability must increase, and programs must show measurable results. Finally, we cover housing stability through VA home loan programs and the responsibility to ensure Veterans have real options to maintain their homes, but also understand they have a personal responsibility for the financial decisions they make. This conversation is about clarity and accountability. Because at the end of the day, the mission is simple - deliver results for Veterans. Highlights 0:00 Introduction2:31 Welcome to the Jedburgh Podcast3:31 Dispelling Disability Rating Misconceptions10:43 Running A Wartime VA16:24 Electronic Health Record Modernization20:09 Is the VA Privatizing Healthcare?27:51 VA Employee Moral34:22 Cutting the VASP Program39:06 Preventing Fraud43:13 Veteran Suicide Prevention Quotes “No one that already had a disability rating was ever going to lose anything.”“I take full responsibility.”“Nobody’s getting judged differently.”“We’re the largest integrated healthcare system in the country. We don’t act like it.”“There’s no plan for privatization.”“80% of all new doctors go through the VA in some form.”“Privatization is thrown around to scare employees and veterans.”“We’re never going to privatize. Definitely not under my watch. And there’s no mechanism to privatize.”“There are people invested in a broken system.”“I have to compete for doctors and nurses with every hospital in the country.”“Our problem was we had too many people in the wrong places.”“What are you doing that’s stupid?”“60% of death by suicide by Veterans have not had any contact with the VA.”“The VA many times was more concerned about itself than we were about actually finding metrics for the veteran.” “Capitol Hill has become more driven by the five minute YouTube clip.” The Jedburgh Podcast is brought to you by OneBrief; https://www.onebrief.com/ enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman command wins wars. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast https://www.instagram.com/jedburghpodcast/ and the Green Beret Foundation https://www.instagram.com/greenberetfoundation/ on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform https://pod.link/1558608802, read on our website https://greenberetfoundation.org/the-jedburgh-podcast/, and watch the full video version on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jedburghpodcast as we show why America must continue to lead from the front, no matter the challenge.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Fran Racioppi?

  There's a steady stream of headlines shaping how veterans view the Department of Veterans Affairs. Disability benefits are being cut. The VA is being privatized. Programs are disappearing. That's the narrative. But is it the reality? In a social media environment driven by clicks, likes, engagement, information spreads fast. And too often, no one stops to ask whether it's actually true. When it comes to healthcare benefits and the systems veterans rely on, the facts matter. In this episode, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins joins me to address those concerns directly and bring clarity to what's actually happening inside the VA. This isn't a surface-level conversation. It's a direct response to the questions veterans are asking right now.

• 0:47Fran Racioppi?

  We break down the proposed Disability Rating Regulation enforcement that rocked the veteran community, what it was intended to do, how it was misinterpreted, and why it was withdrawn within days. We discuss the rollout of the VA's electronic health record modernization, what's working, what still needs to improve, and how it will impact healthcare moving forward. Secretary Collins also addresses the reality of community care and the claims surrounding privatization, clarifying how the VA will always deliver and fund care for veterans. We talk about workforce challenges, hiring, and the responsibility to ensure veterans are receiving timely and effective support with a right-size VA staffing model. The conversation also focuses on one of the most critical issues facing the veteran community: suicide prevention.

• 1:31Fran Racioppi?

  With the majority of veterans not currently engaged with the VA, that approach must evolve. Outreach must expand. Accountability must increase. And programs must show measurable results. Finally, we cover housing stability through the VA home loan programs and the responsibility to ensure veterans have real options to maintain their homes. But also, every veteran understands they have a personal responsibility for the financial decisions they make. This conversation is about clarity and accountability because at the end of the day, the mission is simple, deliver results for our veterans. The Jedberg Podcast is brought to you by One Brief, enabling military leaders to make innovative, informed, and deliberate decisions faster than ever before. Superhuman Command wins wars.

• 2:16Fran Racioppi?

  Follow the Jedberg Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on social media. Listen on your favorite podcast platform, read on our website, and watch the full video version on YouTube as we show you why America must continue to lead from the front. Don't match the challenge. Mr. Secretary, welcome back to the Jedberg Podcast.

• 2:33Speaker 01

  Glad to be here. It's always good to be with you.

• 2:35Fran Racioppi?

  Well, last time we sat down was back on September 4th. A lot of things have changed in the world.

• 2:40Speaker 01

  In its eternity.

• 2:42Fran Racioppi?

  So it doesn't seem like a long time, but actually when we were setting this up, there was, there's a number of different initiatives over the last couple of months that the VA has put forward that you have championed and spearheaded and have been talking a lot about. And it's been awesome to see your perspective on some of those. But there's been some information and misinformation that's been out there and we've been hit very hard by our special forces community who watched our first interview and was excited about a lot of what we talked about. And I guess we're making our, the right place as a journalist and as a journalism media outlet because now they expect us to be able to come back, sit down with you again, talk about some of those issues and figure out where we're actually at and how it's going to affect the community.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  Voila, here you are.

• 3:25Fran Racioppi?

  So I appreciate very much you taking the time. Let's start with the disability rating policy discussions that occurred.

• 3:31Speaker 01

  So there's an IFR, what's called an IFR.

• 3:34Fran Racioppi?

  Which is?

• 3:35Speaker 01

  A rule, a regulation.

• 3:36Fran Racioppi?

  Okay.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  That came out. Let me just go ahead and explain.

• 3:39Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Because this is something, and for all of you out there, I'm going to give your podcast listeners something upfront. The VA is like any organization. Sometimes you go down a policy run or you get things and it doesn't work out or it's wrong. In the past, the VA would have just sort of sloughed over it and went, and just sort of dealt with it on the side. This came out of, and I'm going to be just transparent as possible, because I think we want to, and instead of somebody believing people who sort of get in their car and yell into the phone saying they're doing this and telling things that is just not true, I want to go ahead and give you the direct answer. This came out of a court case in which the case was, and it was Ingram case, in which we had, there was some discussion about using medication, how do you take the effects?

• 4:21Speaker 01

  The baseline for always for us is, how has the disability affected your ability to function in life? Okay? Many times medication is talked about, medication is not. What's really interesting is, though, is I've also had this, and being open, front, and honest, is a lot of times people are told, "Don't take your medications before you go in to do your CMP exam." This is just a known, common fact. It's not something that's hidden. Everybody knows that. This was not ever the intention here. Ingram said that we needed to go to the baseline, which is what would happen, again, without any medication or whatever. And we said, "Okay, we were following that." But they also said that this could be part of a rule, a regulation, so that we could say how to set this up. What the court case did, though, ever, was really gave some language that we felt was

• 5:03Speaker 01

  going to be problematic, in the sense that it gave the disability claims person the unfortunate perspective of having to guess what you would be if. Okay? So there was some discussion on how do we make sure that we're still going back to the baseline to get the better and the most benefit we possibly can, but also in taking the, sort of the subjectivity out of it, and say, and they make it objective and say, "Okay, here's what we're looking for, here's how we need to do it," and not leave it to one rating getting one thing, and one raider getting an X, and another rating giving another, which would lead to more trouble and more problematic situations going on. So the regulation went through normal order, it went through everything discussed, and through the process to say, "How can we affect this and to make it a positive change for veterans?" It was never intended to cut benefits, it was never intended to do anything except

• 5:48Speaker 01

  clarify from what we got from the courts. Now- When it first got put out, the first thing that came out from many people was is you're going to stay off your medication, we're going to go back and cut disability claims for previous claims, and we're going to go back and look at it, all wrong, all false, not true. Okay? And so for anybody that got online, got on social media and said that, you frankly should get back on the, and frankly should apologize, but I won't go that far, because that was never a part. No one was ever going, that had already had a disability rating, was going to lose anything on their disability rating. So anybody that emailed y'all, texted y'all, and they were saying they're going to cut my disability rating, was not true. There was a panic set in that should have never been there. But, within 24 hours, I recognized the fact that this new reg was not being perceived

• 6:33Speaker 01

  in the way it was supposed to be, and probably wasn't worded in a way because of what we did, to say, okay, why is this? And so I said, very quickly, I said, this is not doing what we want it to do, it's not going to affect what we need to do, I said, so I stopped it. Within roughly less than 24 to 36 hours, I just said, you know, we're not going to put this through, we're not going to enforce it. Within a week, less than a week, we took it completely off the books. I saw somebody the other day on social media that said it's still on the books, that's also a lie. It's not. We completely terminated this, completely off, there's no comment, because he said, you can still go and make comments on it. No, you can't, because it's not up. I think what we learned here was, is number one, we didn't do a good job communicating what was trying to be done, we didn't do a good job of communicating that there was nobody that was going to lose any disability ratings they currently had, that it was anything

• 7:16Speaker 01

  that was only perspective or prospective looking to so that we could maybe get a way in which our claims agents could be on a same page, instead of each person sort of hypothetically, and this is what the court actually said, hypothetically, looking at what it would be. So, look, I take full responsibility for it. The buck stops with me, it was, I've made this statement before, and some people have actually heard me say this, when I was a pastor, I said, if it's a mist in the pulpit, it's a fog in the congregation. Well, it became very clear that this was a fog in the congregation. So we took immediate steps to say, no, we're not going to do this, it was not nefarious, it was not, you know, but I was not going to fight that battle to try and convince people of something that wasn't true, because they'd already made their mind up. And that's why, within the next week, we took it completely off the books. Going forward, there's no need to look back at this, Ingram is being enforced, just as it was before this.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  ...regulation came out, we're looking at still to the baseline of need and disability impairment given by the veterans. So for us, it was simply, I'll take responsibility for the chaos that it caused for a little bit. And it was, okay, but we fixed it. This is not something you see from a VA. I don't know how many secretaries of VA would sit here and tell you, hey, it didn't work. We tried to do something that we felt was going to be bring some cohesiveness to the process and it was misinformed and misinterpreted, maybe because of some language we used or how we were doing it. But at the end of the thing, that's not what I want. Veterans are always first at the VA. So we just said, no, we're not going to do it anymore. So for us, we've moved on. It's off the books. Nobody needs to worry about it. But they also need to be very careful about what you hear. And we're going to talk, I think, some more today about some stuff that you're hearing

• 8:44Speaker 01

  online that is not always true. And that's why we try to put out the best. So from my perspective, this was not a nefarious act. It was not a cutting benefits act. Nobody was going to go backwards and do that. But sometimes, as you know, in circles, you can't convince something, somebody that's already made up their mind. And so for us, it was just easier to say, look, I'm not going to put my veterans in that. We'll take it off the books. We move forward.

• 9:07Fran Racioppi?

  When faced with a challenge, Green Berets adapt, overcome, and keep moving forward. Now's your chance to stand with them. Join the 1952 Society with a monthly gift of just $19.52 to provide critical medical devices for wounded, ill, and injured Green Berets. Your support fuels their recovery, helping them return to duty or continue serving their communities. A Green Berets mission never stops. Neither should our support. Join the 1952 Society today and stand with those who stand for us. So if I'm a transitioning service member today, and I'm going to the VA and I'm getting my evaluation, my evaluations for all of my medical claims, how am I being evaluated?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  The same way you've always been evaluated. Nothing's changed. The same way you, what's your baseline? We always look to say, what is the baseline disability? And again, there's always different issues of situations that come up that affect how you're determined, but it's all, nothing has changed. I think that's the unfortunate part out there. Everybody thinks something's changed. Nothing's changed. Everybody that goes through this process, in fact, we're trying to make it better. I think that's the other issue for, we're trying to make it. Too many times, we have to go through this process in which we go out for CMP exams and stuff on stuff we already know is there. And so it just complicates the process. We're actually in the process right now of seeing how much can we do without having to go to CMP exams by just taking what's in your current record. And if we have it documented, why do I need to have another doctor go and say, yeah, it's already in the record, you're fine. So that's really where we're at now.

• 10:31Speaker 01

  Nobody's getting judged differently. In fact, like I said, that whole issue is put to bed. It's not even a part of what we do. So, you know, it takes you as you are and what the disabilities you're presenting and what the impairment is, and that's how we rate you.

• 10:42Fran Racioppi?

  You talked about the records here and, you know, looking back, and last time we spoke, we talked a lot about the integration between the VA and the Department of War and where that actually now has to cross over and how do we make that as seamless as possible. We're at a, I won't call it a war, we are in a situation, okay, with Iran.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  We're in a hot fire environment.

• 11:02Fran Racioppi?

  We are, we are. But we are in a conflict with Iran right now, which certainly puts the Department of War on a wartime footing, but it also puts the Department of Veteran Affairs on a wartime footing.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally, yeah.

• 11:14Fran Racioppi?

  In your perspective, how does mass conflict and all of our, in all of our conversations, we call it large-scale combat operations, much different than the global war on terror, which we were a part of. How does that affect how you approach serving the veterans at the VA?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Well, I think it really, we are sort of the after effect. I've always said that Pete is Secretary of War and myself, Secretary of Veteran Affairs, we run fraternal twin organizations. We're the same, but we're different in when we take care of you and when we get you. Okay. So right now, he is in this conflict that he's having to deal with and he's, whether it be Venezuela, whether it be here, there's been hot issues. Where it affects us is not now, is what I'd have to say, except in the area of unfortunate fatalities. And many of those have been buried in VA national cemeteries. And one of the things I did early on also was to tell our benefits and folks in our VBA to go ahead and make initial contact with DOW to say, I want this as seamless as possible between

• 12:12Speaker 01

  the families of these who have given their life and so that there's absolutely no, what do I need to do next? Sometimes in the past, it's been DOW handles their part and then it just sort of comes to us. I made the proactive step for our folks to reach out and so far it's been very good. We've reached out on the benefits. Most are already getting their benefits. We did, we cut down that time to almost nothing because we're integrated in with DOW, which I think is a really good thing. Where it affects us though the most is, is where do we go in the future? So if you have some that are going, that come out of this medically retired, or some that come out of this and they get out on their own, but they have issues that develop from the combat, that's where it sort of hits us. So it's more of a, we're the rolling after effect. And I've talked about this before because I think the VA in particular has to prepare

• 12:57Speaker 01

  for the GWOT generation, not, we need to prepare now, but that's going to be about a 10 to 15 year cycle to get those who have either latent issues, or they have issues that are being taken care of with insurance and other things. When they got out, they went into a job, they took that, they didn't take their VA benefits. And so they're not, we're not seeing them in our hospitals. And if you think that age, remember 18 at, say you're 18 at 2001.

• 13:20Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  You know, and you're 20 years later, you're 38, so you're early 40s now roughly, mid 40s. So we're starting to get some that are in their prime working years, but another 10 years, they may be talking about true retirement. They may be talking about getting out of the private sector, not having that insurance. So for us, we've got to prepare for what comes in the future. The interesting thing for me is, is very similar to GWOT. It's very similar to what we're going to see in that flash, very sudden, very violent, very issues that are dealing with whether it's a physical injury or the mental issues that go along with trauma. And so that's sort of where we're trying to figure that out.

• 13:55Fran Racioppi?

  How are you looking ahead and assessing what some of those challenges may be? Because everybody knows, we got caught a bit flat footed when we went into Iraq, when we went into Afghanistan, and it took us years to really, truly understand TBI and PTSD, and then develop programs that were going to help our veterans to get through that. How are you looking ahead and saying, okay, this is what we may expect in, because warfare has changed. We just saw over the last five weeks.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:19Fran Racioppi?

  I mean, I'm an army guy. You know, we certainly for 20 plus years carried the brunt of service, but the Navy is front and center, the Air Force is front and center. But the challenges that those folks are going to deal with on the back end are very different than what we do.

• 14:32Speaker 01

  Oh, exactly. Well, as an Air Force chaplain who's retiring next month from the Air Force, I mean, I was in Iraq, I've been, and we just do different jobs and different things. And I dealt with this for years in the Air Force, is the different styles and different issues, you know, from, you know, From a drone pilot to a CEDR pilot, you know, a flight pilot or to a tanker as opposed to a bomber, all kinds of things to the maintenance shops in the air force side, Navy side, you've got the ship life. You've got different things that we've not seen, the major conflicts with our Navy right now. I think what we're doing is taking the benefits of what we learned in the last 20 plus years. D O W, I think, learned the most out of that because remember all of the treatment for those who are wounded and critically wounded up front go through D O W, back then it was D O D.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  So then we get them sort of, again, seeming sometimes five or four or five or even 10 years after they have left D O D medicine. D O D medicine has changed a lot, too. They, over the years, have sort of moved away from the family orientation, those going off base now. So they're seeing fewer patients. We're actually integrating more with D O W physicians across the spectrum to get their training purposes and also working. So for us, I think it's more of a just take what we've learned. Again, I'll show this and you mentioned this a minute ago. Right now, the issues of traumatic brain injury, the issues of CTE, the issues of stuff that we saw with, you know, IEDs and stuff like, really a part of this conflict. There's more of the mental aspect of conflict of what are we doing that I wouldn't even call it moral injury kind of stuff that we're having to deal with.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  So again, we're just sort of trying to adapt and see what comes to us. But we're, as always, we've been increasing as we have been in the last few years, that mental health issue, our preparation and the things that we need to do there.

• 16:08Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah, I think mental health will be front and center for a lot of folks who are involved in this conflict.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  I agree.

• 16:12Fran Racioppi?

  In the air force and the Navy. One of the initiatives that the VA has been planned for a while, but under your leadership over the last year, it has really advanced, and that's the modernization of the electronic health records. I remember certainly when I came in and certainly when I got out, receiving the stack of the paper and also enduring what many service members endured during their career, we lost your medical records.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:35Fran Racioppi?

  And you would say, I don't understand, like, how do you, is it not digitized? And honestly, it wasn't for quite a long time.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  D O D wasn't and we wasn't either.

• 16:41Fran Racioppi?

  But now we have this initiative to get the electronic health record modernization program rolled out, and that's going across all VAs and there's massive infrastructure that's going in. I know that in Michigan was the first one to roll out. How is that rollout going and what were the success? is in Michigan, but then also what are some of the challenges that you

• 16:57Speaker 01

  I'm so happy to sit here and say just a few days ago, Michigan rolled out our first four. The previous administration gave up. In fact, they just threw up their hands and quit. We spent 18 billion dollars and just quit. We had six sites and they just quit because they didn't know a way forward. That's when I, you know, we talked about last fall that we sat them down and said, no, we got to move forward. So this, just this past weekend, we opened the four sites in Michigan, each with different needs, some more critical care, some, but it was the four main ones there at, in Battle Creek, Detroit, Saginaw and Ann Arbor. And so far it's went well. It's just went, just like you'd expect any major hospital to have with this printer didn't work or this and that is not mapped right. Other than that, patients are being seen, everything's going well. It's put us now in a position for their community care and for direct care to have exchange of records, getting the things that we need.

• 17:41Speaker 01

  So that seamless service of care is performed, whether they in-house or in our community, which has been very good because up until now, our systems couldn't share with those outside. We got another nine that are going in by the end of this year, and we got 23 on schedule for next year. DOW went through this process and they had something that we didn't have at that point. It also failed miserably when they first started it almost 10 years ago. They went on a one-year pause and came back in and basically ordered everybody to get their stuff together and do it done. So they got, they got it done. We didn't have that same impetus over here. We still sort of let everybody do their own thing. And so the six sites that were done, just frankly wasn't up to speed.

• 18:20Speaker 01

  So we set a whole new process in motion. We totally different training, totally different rollout, totally different issue. Standardization became prime. Everybody looks and acts the same in, in the system so that we can pick and place people from different facilities. So it's really went well. It's going to help in so many different ways, especially internally into the scheduling part. We're getting to, it'll help us get to the point where scheduling becomes seamless. You don't have to even talk to people. We're going, it'll help us integrate with our mobile apps where you can schedule multiple appointments on the same day. You don't have to keep going and getting put to a different system. These are the kind of things that this will help us with, but the big aspect is it just brings our whole system into the 21st century. We have a system of $750 million called Vista that we just put 750 million just to keep it alive.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  To improve it, just to keep it alive. This is a huge win for the veterans. It's a huge win for the VA to get this started. We've got a long way left to go, but we're on the right track.

• 19:14Fran Racioppi?

  When we spoke last time, we talked about the various initiatives that the VA has around empowering veteran owned businesses. And I will say this program, and last week we had the chance to be back in here down in DC and we sat down with Deputy Administrator for the SBA, Bill Briggs. And we talked all about the veteran owned business set asides that are in these projects. So the plug to the veteran owned businesses out there is as you go about doing this across the country. There is a significant portion of this project that's set aside for veteran owned businesses and we're trying to get involved in the security scope.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's great for everybody, but I think at the end of the day, it's about a veteran. It's about is it veteran care? And again, it's not just the veteran itself is we're giving our employees, we're the largest integrated healthcare system in the country. We don't act like it. That's our fault. It's time we start acting like it. And with 170 hospitals, 1300 clinics, we ought to have the best equipment. We ought to have the best processes. So that people, one, want to come to the VA, the veterans can say, I go to the VA and the folks outside saying, I wish I could go to the VA. And doctors and nurses want to come and clinicians and housekeeping and everybody else want to come work for us because they're getting the best of what happened. And that's where we're putting it right now.

• 20:20Fran Racioppi?

  When we sat in September, we talked about the utilization of many of the VA hospitals as teaching hospitals partnerships, specifically in New York with NYU. And some of the premier medical organizations across the country, there's a perception out there and we're getting the mail that the VA is privatizing healthcare.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  I wish honestly, and I say this with love, and I don't know where this perception comes from, except from people who again, just have these thoughts that come in their head. If I honestly had a nickel for every time somebody said, you're going to privatize it, I would have not been in this job long because I could have retired wealthy. There's no plan for privatization. Let me say this over and over again, and people are going to look at it and they'll still don't believe me. No plans for privatization. There's no structural way to privatize the VA. The VA is going to be here for our veterans in many ways because like I said, over the years, we've had to adapt to how we take care of. Veterans, we're the only statutorily mandated department that takes care of veterans, healthcare, veterans benefits, and all that comes from Congress. So, I used to get upset about it. I'll be frank with you. You're gonna privatize it, you're gonna privatize it. I used to get mad.

• 21:28Speaker 01

  I don't anymore. I just, if my southern, north Georgia upbringing, it's just bless your heart. Because I can't tell you anymore. Here's what they say. Here's what they get. By the way, talking about us training doctors and stuff, we train 80% of baby docs in this country. 80% of all new doctors go through the VA in some form, clinical rotation at some point. We're very proud of the fact that we helped medical schools that have for years, trained doctors. What we need to do now is keep more of them. What has happened over time? If you like the VA and you want to stay in the VA and get direct care for all your medical care, go for it. In fact, we want you to. In fact, we've opened 34 new clinics. Over the past year, we got about the same amount getting ready to be opened in this year. And so, we have the facilities, we have the place to take care of direct care, and if you don't want to go into the community at all, not.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  When we followed the law called the Mission Act, there's many in Congress, some on parties that I was not a part of, and others who think that that is privatization. That if you send, if you allow members to go into the community, you're privatizing the VA. You're taking money away from the VA. You're not. We have two separate budgets for this. The direct care money has been going up, again, every year, so is our community care because we have more veterans utilizing it. A lot of what we see many times is a very much of an age difference. Our older veterans tend to like direct care in their VA facility more than they do, or they have never had a need to go to the community. Younger veterans, GWAT veterans, PAC Act, which I thought is pretty funny, a lot of

• 22:54Speaker 01

  the very good proponents of the PAC Act, which I think is a great thing, it pushed a lot of our folks to community care. And the same people, when I tell some of those who now say you're privatizing the VA by using more community care, I said, "Well, the bill you passed actually opened that door for us to go to the community." Privatization is thrown around to scare employees and to scare veterans that, because that is really, it shouldn't be unfounded. Interestingly enough, you have some out there as veterans who want the whole thing to be privatized and members of Congress at all, because that's just the way they're being. But we're never going to privatize. They're definitely not under my watch and there's no mechanism to privatize. I've been accused of closing, you know, that I can close a hospital.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  I can't close a hospital. Never. I don't have the ability to close a hospital. Funny enough, the Senate, a few years ago, under Senator Tester, they had a commission that was going to look at all the facilities and say, you know, what are the utilization and could we combine any or do this kind of stuff? Hundred to zero this past. When they got the commission together to go get the final approval from the Senate to get it happen, Tester just put it in a drawer and wouldn't let it happen. It died. The same ones who went out front and said, we want to make the VA efficient, also killed any ability to do that. And then they tried to blame me that I blame other secretaries that you're going to try and privatize VA. That's just not happening. I wish we could move forward on that. I wish we could move, get over this, but there are people invested, and you need to hear this,

• 24:18Speaker 01

  there are people invested in a broken system. And I know that's hard for some to take. They are happier, seemingly, when the system's not working. So they can complain about it and they can try to get more money or they try to get something else to it. So it's easier for them in Congress or other places to complain about a bad system without fixing it. I have run into the most backlash of trying to electronic health records management, reorganization of the VHA to make it more streamlined so veterans get care quicker, our answers get done quicker. I've run into more resistance from those who are more concerned about how many employees we have and how big our budget is as opposed to what is the outcome. I am concerned about a veteran's outcome and if we do that with more employees

• 25:01Speaker 01

  or less employees, that's up to Congress and up to how we do it. But at the end of the day, it's about a veteran. So this privatization issue, I wish I could somehow find a way to put it to bed, but somebody will always whip out the card privatization and it's typically to help or from their perspective, to either stir clicks or emotions or to really continue a system that really isn't working.

• 25:23Fran Racioppi?

  I think some of that perspective, though, comes around specialty care because the VA doesn't do everything.

• 25:30Speaker 01

  No, well, no hospital system in the country does.

• 25:32Fran Racioppi?

  Right. And so they refer you out to specialists who are, I mean, that happened to me with my eye injuries.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, here's another thing. I'm so glad you mentioned this. I have a limitation. I have to compete for doctors and nurses with every hospital in the country, every hospital in the country, from Mayo to the smallest little local hospital. Where I have problems is in these specialty sides, and again, I don't know how it's privatization. Again, I'm paying the bill. How can it be privatized when VA is paying the bill? I just don't get that. In a sense, because I'm paying the bill for them to go to that care. Not CMS, not anybody else, not you. I'm paying for it. So VA is paying the bill. So VA can't privatize because we're paying the bill and we have direct care. But if I have a system in which you need a specialty oncologist, or you need a specialty

• 26:21Speaker 01

  intervention radiologist, here's a problem I have. Cleveland Clinic, or some of these others, can hire this person at $300,000 to $400,000 more starting than I can pay. Okay? I have made this known to Congress. I have made this known all over the world. Until they raise the cap for all of my specialties where I can then pay them more, I will consistently not be able to hire some of these specialties. And they will have to be seen in the community because I can't hire them. I'm not going to make somebody work for less than they can. I mean, it's a free market system.

• 26:56Fran Racioppi?

  Especially if you want to hire the best.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's my problem. And so it's not privatization in the sense, it's just the facts and realities of the healthcare system that sometimes people believe the VA can suspend. It's like gravity. I can't suspend gravity. I can't suspend the fact that we're part of the healthcare ecosystem. I just have to deal with what I have to deal with. And part of it, though, is that we need to act better as far as being more aggressive in our hiring and changing our hiring procedure. We take too long to hire. I've got a process in now. I mean, we've had doctors and nurses taking 100 days and longer to hire just to get them in the door. I've set out a directive that by the end of this fiscal year, we're going to be in 30 to 40 day range of hiring, which is very comparable to the private sector. So I'm not losing doctors to the private sector because we make them an offer.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Three months later, we still can't put them on, and they get another offer, they go work somewhere else. So we're working it. It's tough work because the system is so, was so bent on itself. I can't tell you how different the outlook is right now at the VA to not be what we were. And that is a slow bureaucratic dragging organization that did great work, but many times couldn't get over itself.

• 28:05Fran Racioppi?

  There's been a lot of changes in the, I won't say the organizational structure of the VA, but I'll say when you look at the workforce. There's a large reductions that happened when Doge came in earlier in the administration. And some of those effects still linger throughout the organization from an employee perspective. How would you assess the employee morale and the person who comes in, wakes up every day and says, "I'm going to work at the VA," you know, are they excited to wake up and come to work?

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Well, number one, Doge, let me take that, be a little part. We have over 30,000 folks that took early retirement last year. Had nothing to do with Doge. We fired nobody. Again, that's another thing that gets talked on us that we went and fired everybody. We didn't. 30,000-ish, little more, took early retirement. And this is what also those not added into that. In the previous five years, we had added over 100,000 employees and over 150 to billion dollars to our budget in the previous administration. And what was interesting was is our metrics went backwards. Our disability claim wait time was over 260,000 when I got in here. We're at 80,000, by the way, now. It was 139 days, average days to complete. We're at 75 now. We had over a million claims just waiting. We're now down to roughly 500,000.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  We're getting to a normal process of not catching up. We're doing it as we get them in. That's all with the change in structure of force. Okay? That's all with folks who took early retirement. We're doing all that with less people and doing it better. Do we have vacancies in hospitals right now that we need to fill? Yes. Did we have vacancies to fill five years ago? Yes. Did we have vacancies to fill when we, before 30,000 people took early retirement? Yes, we did. I'll never deny that. You can look at it. Are we filling it quicker than has been filled in the past? Yes. Is our rate of number of employees, the system lower than where it was, but are we keeping them? We're keeping them better. Here's an interesting statistic also that needs to be said.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  In the last five years, the VA has had about a 5% growth in patient contact. So like when you go in, that's a contact. 5% growth overall. Not bad. Do you realize what our FTE count was? How much we grew in it? 14%. 5% interaction, but we grew 14% in our FTE count. And again, as I just said, most of our numbers were not, you would have thought that much more would have helped this much more. We're actually going backwards. Some of our facilities actually had a 33% increase in people and a negative decrease in patient interaction. So in other words, they were seeing less people and had 30% growth in their personnel. Our problem was not necessarily that we didn't have, that

• 30:41Speaker 01

  we do need people, which we need right now. There's no hiring freeze. We'll hire anybody. If we have to have a doctor, we'll go out and hire him as quickly as we possibly can, just like with everybody else. Our problem was we had too many people in the wrong places. We hired too many back office people. We hired too many people in other places that we didn't need. I've coached baseball and football and little leagues for years and played them myself. I remember a coach one time in our draft, so to speak, and we're getting in there and we're sort of drafting the kids and we're picking the kids around. And I watched this one young coach and he started picking and he was one of the early picks. So he picked one of the kids that could be like a quarterback. Okay. Well, the next round around, he picked another kid that was the same bill, quarterback. He got

• 31:26Speaker 01

  into the third round, he picked another kid that's more running back, but quarterback because they, all the kids listed what they wanted to play. We got into the fourth round, fifth round, he was still picking quarterbacks for the team and the rest of us, you know, would pick what we, you know, we get a running back, we get a lineman, you know, somebody to block. What ended up happening, he sort of drafted for the first seven or eight rounds all backfield and he was letting all of the linemen go unpicked. It was a terrible year. He had nobody to block. Part of our issue was, is we hired in the wrong areas. I didn't have a Manning document when I first got here. You've been in the military for years. You ever have a Manning document?

• 32:01Fran Racioppi?

  You need a Manning document.

• 32:02Speaker 01

  You gotta have one.

• 32:02Fran Racioppi?

  I have a Manning document for my company.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  I didn't have one. I didn't. It took me a week and a half to get the total number of employees. Total number of employees. I couldn't even get a total number of employees. We were still paying half of our employees out of a centralized payroll system and we allowed 60 other units in the VA to pay everybody else. We're finally getting that back merged together. We were hiring people without Knowing why. We were just saying, "Hire." So, we would hire people in certain areas that we didn't, it wasn't the best use of our time, or best use of our workforce. I think our workforce now, to finish your part, I hope they know, I have their back, I'm wanting them to be proud to work at the VA. I ask the question to every hospital I walk in, "What are you doing that's stupid?" In other words, "What are you doing here that you wouldn't do at another hospital that interferes with patient care?"

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Faces light up, and they start, you know, and after they see I'm really serious, they say, "Well, I'm having to do this three times on this paperwork, I wouldn't have to do that at another hospital, and it takes me this long, it takes this much long to get the patient what they need." I said, "Let's fix it." And so, we fix it, right there on the spot. We come back home, we fix it, we change it, so they can actually do their job quicker. We're not in any mode of, I never did a reduction force, like I said, I've never fired anybody. We took the volunteers, we've not had any in this year, we're not looking to have any. Our budget has grown, and the President has been very generous again this year, and Congress hopefully will be as well. So, we have the situation to where we can be effective at what we do, but the outcomes

• 33:31Speaker 01

  at VA were too long determined by FTE counts and how much money the budget is. They didn't care about metrics of performance. They didn't care about the quality sort of aspect of that, and is the veteran getting taken care of? We flipped that on its head, now it's only, our main concern is, is the veteran getting what they need? We'll adjust our workforce and our budgets to make sure that happens. So, I hope that at least expands out, because I still have articles today about, "Well, you're shorthanded in X hospital." Yes, I'm not denying that we might need a doctor or two, or a nurse or two here. We're hiring every day. If you've got a person in that area who wants to go take a job, we'll hire them tomorrow. It's not because we're keeping them out, it's not because we have a hiring freeze, which some like to say, it's because we're just like everybody else. We hire the same doctors and nurses that every other hospital does.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  To cherry this, "We're doing less with more with less," however they want to call it, is really frankly not fair, in the sense of what we're looking at. Do some people feel like, you know, "I need more help?" Yeah, I'm the same way. I'll look at their numbers, but we tell them to hire. The biggest issue is, is we just changed how we expected our workforce to act, to hire the standards, to get the high standards up, and to make sure veterans are getting taken care of.

• 34:40Fran Racioppi?

  I want to ask you about another one of these topics that's out there and that's the VASP, the VA home loan where they're, they're taking over loans that were in forbearance if

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Was, yeah.

• 34:50Fran Racioppi?

  And that program has been cut as of March last year. Can you talk for a minute about the impact that has had because the numbers fluctuate where folks are saying there's anywhere from 10 to 17,000 veterans who lost their home or were prepared to lose their home because that program was taken away?

• 35:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, let's also understand something here. The Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage bankers are the ones who actually foreclose. We don't. Now, they've tried to force it on us as saying you did this and people are, they're the ones that ultimately at the end of the day, many times, we have many outlets for veterans to get help and to do things and now we have partial claim. There's a lot of things that veterans can do to get help in this. And, but at the end of the day, it's the bankers who decide to foreclose, not the VA. We do not foreclose on anybody. So anybody out there telling you that, we don't. VASP was a made up program that was never budgeted and it was put into play in the previous administration coming out of COVID. Okay. Members of Capitol, members of Congress, including the chairman and the House Veterans

• 35:48Speaker 01

  Affairs Committee, even the Senate and others, all said VASP was not a proper program, shouldn't have been done and was in favor of getting rid of it because it let the VA into a position of having foreclosed houses, stuff that we're building up that we had interest in now because we were taking a part of this. When those happen, we're not a realty company. We don't turn in these houses and send them. So it was just a bad program. So that's why we stopped it. Partial claim now has been passed on by, by the president to help get that in motion. I think the big thing that you have to understand, and this is, I'll just be honest about this. We need to make sure veterans have proper housing that they need. They need to be able to get jobs and keep jobs and they need to be able to make the house payment. And

• 36:31Speaker 01

  If the situation continues, we're going to give them every opportunity to do that. But at a certain point in time, especially if they're the ability, the work and all there and they're not making the house payment or they're not, then that's a part of the system that happens to anybody else in this country too. So I'm not unsympathetic toward it. We're trying to do everything we can to help. We've been cast in a bad light by the mortgage banker folks saying that we're the cause of this. We're, they're the ones that end up at the end of the day pulling the mortgage. They're the ones that put the people out on the street, not us. We'll give them every opportunity and work with programs and many times they're not using the programs that are currently available to them.

• 37:07Fran Racioppi?

  There's a concept out there that we discuss a lot about is veterans are not victims.

• 37:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 37:13Fran Racioppi?

  And to me, when I look at some of these discussions where we cast veterans as victims, what we tend to do is take away what really what you're talking about, which is personal responsibility.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 37:25Fran Racioppi?

  At the end of the day, if you buy a car, you buy a house, you spend money on your credit card, you have to pay those things.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:32Fran Racioppi?

  And yes, people run through difficult times. They have times getting where they get fired, they get laid off, you know, all of these life things happen to us. But to me, we can't position veterans as victims that say, hey, just because you're a veteran, well, okay, well now we're going to bail you out.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  I appreciate you saying that. I say that, I get charged as a demon, but it's true. And I don't mean this badly. I want to help every veteran stay in their home. I want to help every veteran get a good job. I want to help every, go to VR and E. If you're, if you're not in your employment that you want to be, come to our vocational rehab. We'll get you into a new job. We'll help pay for getting you into a new job. We want to help everybody we can, but at the end of the day, we both go back in the military. How many E1s, E2s got that first two paychecks and they went out and bought a new truck?

• 38:13Fran Racioppi?

  It was a sick ride.

• 38:14Speaker 01

  It was a great ride.

• 38:16Fran Racioppi?

  Till they couldn't pay the $800 a month.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Until six months later and they said, I can't afford this. And so they go back to the dealership and they, you know, sell it. So again, I'm not making light of homeless, the, the home situation, but I am making saying we're doing what we can do. But, you know, again, I don't take kindly to industries also seemingly casting disperses on us for what they in, at the end of the day do.

• 38:39Fran Racioppi?

  And the programs are out there for aid and help. I mean, even coming from a nonprofit position at the Green Beret Foundation, you know, we have a vast amount of programs where we help folks in need. But we also do get the phone calls, just like, you know, we have with some of the policies that we're talking about here that says, well, you know, hey, I don't have any money to pay. My car needs a repair. Okay. Well, you know, so does mine. Now, you know, are there mitigating circumstances? Did you lose your job? Did you have? No, it's just an expensive repair. You should give me money to pay for it. Well, it doesn't really work that way because you were a veteran, you know, we still have to go out there and we have to figure out these things for ourselves. So I get it. And it's very challenging.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  It is. And I try to be sensitive to it. But also, I just, you know, there's just sometimes you just have to be honest about what the situation is.

• 39:22Fran Racioppi?

  The big topic out there, especially today, actually, as I was walking in, I saw the headline as the vice president is kind of leading this anti-fraud task force across the government. Disability claim fraud has always been a topic of conversation, I think, probably since disability claims were started many years ago. How and what are you doing to prevent fraud of disability?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Let's separate this out because I appreciate what you said just a minute ago about veterans are not victims. And I've been saying this for years as one. I say, I'm not a victim. I chose everything that I chose. And the VA is here to help me overcome anything that happened to me during that time. Okay. And that's, that's just why we're here. But this idea of, and I see this a lot, and you may have saw this recently, there was a social media meme that went around of this person who, let's just say they looked fairly normal like all of us. And they said, well, I'll get $3,000 a month because I have X or whatever. That's my disability rate. And it was jumped on as saying, this is fraud. No, it's not. Okay. Let me just be blunt here. Congress has set forth our disability scale. Congress

• 40:23Speaker 01

  has set forth what we pay for. Congress has set forth that this condition gets you 20%. This condition gets you 50%. That's not fraud. Because every member of the military, you had to do this. You had to prove what your issue was. How's that fraud? Okay, you may not like it and members of Congress may say something about it. But remember, they hold the key. They can say tomorrow, we're not going to cover X. They cover it. They don't like to say that. And also, the general public looks at it because they've never served or they don't want to understand it. And they say, well, that's fraud. It's not fraud. It's a system that has been designed that we do everything we possibly can to live within that system. I mean, think about this.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  We started this podcast talking about disability benefits and to worry about you're going to lose your benefits on something else. And now we've went full circle and many people thinking that same benefit is a fraud. For us, I'm going to tell you where I honestly think our issue is a fraud that we're trying to look at is there's unfortunate groups and others out there that are sort of giving similar answers. They're sort of, they know the trick, so to speak. And so we're just making sure that that doesn't happen. But our biggest issue comes, and I'm just be blunt here, is in making sure that services that are rendered for veterans, say, outside of our system are actually being done. Say, community care. Are you actually getting this? You know, let's say you're going for shots in your neck. Are they doing it the proper way? Are they charging us the right way? I think those are stuff that we need to make sure are being handled properly.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  I've already had one case in which I had a veteran in South Carolina who was getting shots and happened to be friends with one of my best friends in life who were just retired as an intervention radiologist. They were talking about this series of shots and I think it was in his shoulder. And my friend said, well, did they? He said, it didn't feel right. They gave me the shot and my friend said, well, did they use the scope to make sure they were getting the right place? He said, they didn't even lay me down. He said, they just came in, gave me the shot and left. And my friend, who's an intervention radiologist, said, uh-uh, this is wrong. So they looked at the bill and they had charged them for scope. They charged them for everything. We now have, that's being investigated by our internal affairs. Okay, OIG is looking into that.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  That's where we're making sure that people are not taking advantage of our veterans. That's where we see a lot of, we could see the fraudulent issues. But I want to make it clear, I will support any veteran who's raised their right hand and they have documented proof of disability. I kind of don't like that word. Because disability implies something like my daughter has spinal bifid, I think I've told you about that, she can't walk, she's disabled in that sense. Sometimes we associate disability with inability. Disability when it comes to the VA claim is stuff that has happened to you during your time of service that would be not present if you never went into that service, if that makes sense. And then we're compensating you because you went to battle,

• 43:13Speaker 01

  so to speak, or you raised your right hand and agreed to come to our country and cover for our country as a member of the military. I'll always fight for everybody's ability to find out what their disability ratings are, if they have them, if they don't have them, or what. But that's not fraud. If they do it the right way, they do it, they document it, that's not fraud. You may not like it, take it up with Congress. That's, we're going to continue to give those benefits as the law requires. But we're also looking at people outside who may be charging us wrong, vendors, those kinds of things, so we make sure we're spending our dollars wisely.

• 43:42Fran Racioppi?

  Last thing I want to ask you about is suicide prevention expansion and the initiatives around there. So the Staff Sergeant Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant Program has been front and center. You know, we run these numbers around, 22 a day, 17 a day, you know, wherever.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Forty to fifty a day.

• 43:58Fran Racioppi?

  And that's reported.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Can I just jump in here? I get accused, this is, it's funny, I got a pretty thick skin, but I get accused, VA is hiding the real numbers. No, I've always said 17, 22 is sort of the official number. Could it be as high as 30 or 40 because of the way it's reported? Yes. So if you're out there telling me that I hide the numbers, quit lying about me. Okay, I don't say that. We needed something taken seriously. And suicide prevention, when I got here, we were spending five, and still, $500 million on prevention, except we were talking to the wrong people. It took me about six, eight months to figure out, why am I getting these numbers in on what we're all doing? The Fox Grants, by the way, we've actually tightened our Fox Grant so that we have our Fox Grant recipients actually showing us how they're reaching the unreached veteran. That's something that

• 44:45Speaker 01

  should have been in there from day one, it wasn't. And it's helping us because we're actually reaching out to new veterans now. Fox Grants are great, I support them completely, but they also need to be reaching that unreached veteran and not just the ones that, you know, they The easy time. We're looking at it and taking that money and saying, how do we reach the 60% that are not in VA? To make sure that because that's 60% of death by suicide by veterans have not had any contact with the VA. We're going to podcasts like this, we're going to use UFC, Major League Baseball, football, NFL, NBA, all these rodeos, singers, hunters, and saying, we're expanding the audience. We're not just going to put a billboard out front of the VA.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  And we're going to everywhere we can through using email, social media to make contact with these folks because it is something is I value is that important? That we don't need to lose one. We got to figure out how we reach those. So for us, the Fox grants, the money that's been put in there, we need to have metrics that say we are reaching out to those that need to be reached. And I'm not going to ever back up on that. It's just crazy for us to spend money that doesn't get results. I could probably sum up the last 30 to 50 years of the VA in one statement that says, the VA many times, not always, but many times was more concerned about itself, employees, budget dollars than we were about actually finding metrics for the veteran.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Now that's not for everybody. So before anybody gets all bent out of shape out there saying Doug said the VA never cared. No, they cared. But was it focused on results or was it focused on just getting a program out there? I don't care how many programs you have, just have something that works. Show us the results. Fox grants have done a great job doing that.

• 46:23Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. There's a lot going on in the world.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:25Fran Racioppi?

  I told you before we started that we were just in on Capitol Hill before we came over here and you know, there's, there's people everywhere. Everybody's advocating for their cause.

• 46:33Speaker 01

  They've been gone for a little while.

• 46:34Fran Racioppi?

  Yeah. So everybody's back. There's votes going on. One of the things though, that we see that's kind of permeating our government and the feeling, I think of society is that there's this huge divide. That there's this huge divide between the parties and that's trickled down. I mean, there are people now, you can't even try to engage in a conversation with them because they start, oh, you know, you like Trump or you like Biden or you're a Republican, so I can't even talk to you. But at the end of the day, what we need out of our leaders, whether you're appointed, whether you're elected, but you're in a position of responsibility is to advocate and serve. The American population, the American people. In your opinion, in this critical time, because I do believe it's a critical time for our nation in not only in national defense and national security, but as a society.

• 47:18Fran Racioppi?

  How do we bring everyone together and start to really take action that supports the American people?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  I think at a certain point, and I started at Congress and look, I've sort of described it before is if people saw the off the podium members as opposed to the podium members, they would never recognize the two. Okay. There is some performative that goes on there. Okay. And in Congress, especially after the last 15 to 20 years, 25 years, there's been a polarization that is I'm a D, you're an R. You know, we're going to act accordingly. I was very happy with the fact that when I was in Congress, I was actually reached across the aisle. We actually passed a lot of bills. Hakeem Jeffries and I had passed the first step back. There's a lot of things that we passed. Did we agree on everything? No. I think what we've got to get into the fact of now is in looking at it totally, and this is just from Doug's opinion as we go.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  I'm not ever going to get everything I want. And neither are you. What can we agree upon to get to a certain level to say this is winnable for both? I may not get all I want. You're not going to get what you want, but hey, at the end of the day, we're going to do for what we're doing for the American people. I get the benefit and probably the pain, I guess is a way to put it, of dealing with the most retail agency in the federal government. If a veteran does not show up to the hospital or to the computer or to call our nobody in the VA has a job because I don't make policy for anybody else. The unfortunate part I have is is just some of the comments, the stuff that we've talked about today. We lowered the disability backlog from 260,000 to 60,000. And yet today, even on the Hill in a hearing,

• 48:53Speaker 01

  part of the complaint was, well, are you making sure those are accurate? Yes, in fact, our accuracies actually went up. Our qualities actually went up. It's not let's be happy for the result for the veteran. It's well, your team did it. So my team's not happy. I think that's where we got to look at it a little bit. And, and look, I'll never not be who I am. I'm, I came from the background. I'm a Republican conservative. I mean, the president party, I mean, we're always going to have our beliefs, but at a certain point, I'm not going to shed my beliefs. To get something done, but I'm also gonna say, what can we get done that upholds the fact that I have two sort of, I'll say, look at job description, I have to take care of my veterans and I take care of my veterans with taxpayer dollars.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  How do I do that most efficiently for both? I don't make the money that I get to spend. The American people and the veterans make the money that I get to spend. So how am I efficient with that money? And how do I take the veteran and put them the better best we can? Capitol Hill has become more, unfortunately, driven by the five-minute YouTube clip than it has with how we can work together. And so I think until they sort of can solve that problem and we can come together to say it's not all or nothing, then I think it's just we're gonna struggle a little bit. And they're finding that out. I mean, there's times they come together and they can do it when they want to. But the American people also have to understand, and I've said this before, so it's nothing new, you can go back and find out. I've also told people as well, the Congress is a reflection of you.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  You voted for them. They're a reflection of you. And if you're holding unrealistic expectations of what your elected member of Congress should be, then maybe it's time to back up and say, what do we really want in a government that should be limited, that should be efficient, that should be about the American people? And then how do we go about that?

• 50:40Fran Racioppi?

  Well, Secretary Collins, it's always exciting to come here and kind of, and talk to you about what's going on. I appreciate your transparency, appreciate your perspective. The veteran community is critical to this country.

• 50:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:55Fran Racioppi?

  We are gonna have, as you mentioned, you know, an influx back into civilian society from the 9/11 generation, and those have to be contributing members to the community. And we need more folks on the Department of War side to continue to go into service, to serve the country, and then eventually come over to you and the Department of Veterans Affairs. We put veterans to work every day in my company, both in the podcast and my security company, and we're all part of the VA. So, you know, we talk about this stuff all day long, no matter what we're doing. But I appreciate you dispelling some of this, clarifying a lot of the topics that we're getting at the Green Beret Foundation. And having a few moments to really dig into how it affects all of our Green Beret.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I appreciate it. And let me just make an open mic sort of invitation here. If you all of a sudden get something like you did, call me up. I'll be happy to do a quick interview so that you can get it out to them. They hear directly from me. And I think one of the things I hope all the veterans in this country, whether they like me or not, and I get that, someone's gonna like me, some are not. And that's fine. I'm okay with that in the sense of I want them to know, number one, I have their best interests at heart. I want every veteran to get what they have earned. But also, at a certain point in time, there are others who may not tell you the whole story. You're doing a great job of getting the truth out there. But remember, sometimes on social media, clicks are king, and selling stuff on the backside is even more. So just be careful and be wary of anyone

• 52:17Speaker 01

  who shockingly tells you stories, and then also gives you a solution, maybe in the bio to fix it with a payment. Don't do that. If you need help from the VA, it's free. You call us, we can help you. Call your organization. You know how to get in touch with our folks, especially with people that need it. So all I'll say is, let me answer the questions as quickly as possible. Don't let them fester.

• 52:37Fran Racioppi?

  Will do. Take you up on that.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Appreciate it. Thank you.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  American Jedbergs went on to form the foundation of the United States Special Forces and the Special Activities Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Thanks for listening to the Jedburgh Podcast, an official program of the Green Beret Foundation. I'm your creator and host, Fran Richo. Join us next week for a new episode on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check us out on YouTube for full episodes, highlights, and other long and short form content. If you like what you heard, give us a like and leave a review. Follow the Jedburgh Podcast and the Green Beret Foundation on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, X, or Threads. Send your comments and inquiries to [email protected]. As former members of Special Operations Forces, the Jedburgh Media Channel and the Green Beret Foundation remain committed to supporting all generations of US Army Special

• 53:24Speaker 02

  Forces and their families. Thanks for joining us on this episode. How you prepare today determines success tomorrow.