Green Bay Press-Gazette Editorial Board

Stories like Jake David’s are maddening.

The Vietnam War veteran from De Pere is waiting on hip replacement surgery. Press-Gazette reporter Paul Srubas detailed David’s ordeal to get care while being left to hobble around on crutches and try to manage the pain.

Is this how we should be treating our veterans?

The answer is no.

The story becomes even more maddening when you realize the problem was self-inflicted.

The Veterans Choice Program was set up so veterans could get their health care needs met in their communities instead of traveling to faraway facilities or waiting more than 30 days for an appointment at a VA clinic/hospital.

It seems like a logical solution. Get veterans the care they need where they live and in a timely matter.

However, the VA farmed out that work and added another layer of bureaucracy to an overly bureaucratic process to begin with.

Instead of the VA negotiating with local or regional health care providers and approving referrals, a third party was hired to handle the work.

“The VA has injected a middle man that doesn’t have all the data to get things done quickly,” said U.S. Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Sherwood.

Ribble said on Friday it was never the intent of Congress for this task to be handled by an outside provider.

The usual way Congress deals with these kinds of issues is through the “power of the purse,” Ribble said. In other words, lawmakers threaten to cut funding if fixes aren’t made.

In this situation, however, you can’t cut funding for veterans health care. In fact, Congress should probably look to add funding as our Vietnam veterans age and require more assistance with their health.

What Congress should do is bring the VA around to its way of thinking.

Ribble said letters have been sent to the VA and there’s legislation in the House and Senate that will clarify statutorily how Congress would like to see the Choice program run.

We believe that the sooner Congress does this, the better.

Or, even better, the VA could just comply with what was intended instead of wasting more time.

The Veterans Choice Program was created in November 2014, the same year the public learned about the long wait times many veterans endured when seeking care.

At the time we urged Congress to find solutions and to refrain from finger-pointing at the other party and playing politics with veterans’ health care.

Yet here we are two years later and we’re still running into problems. A story on Friday showed that Congress can’t even agree on whether to confirm the VA’s inspector general position, which hasn’t been filled since December 2013.

It won’t happen overnight, but that shouldn’t be an excuse to drag it out. We need to uphold the promises we made to our veterans and address this issue with the speed and importance it deserves.

The Green Bay Press-Gazette is part of the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.