QUIL LAWRENCE, NPR:

Well, it goes back to that moment of scandal. There was a sense of urgency in Congress. And some political rivals, Jeff Miller, Republican of Florida, and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is now much better known, from opposite ends of the spectrum came together with this plan to get all of these veterans, this backlog who were waiting for care, to see private doctors.

It was supposed to be a simple plan. With a card, they could go and use — it seemed at first that they would just be able to go into a private clinic and present this card and get care.

But what was given to the VA was a law to set up a whole new network to get care for anyone who had been waiting 30 days or was 40 miles away from a VA clinic. And Congress gave the VA just 90 days to set this up. They tried to — they first thought they might be able to do it themselves, decided they needed to go outside to get some private contractors to set up the system more quickly.

And only two of the 57 companies they approached to try and do this were willing to give it a shot. The result has been really just an extra layer of bureaucracy that a lot of veterans tell me makes them wait even more than they were waiting before or just as much. Wait times haven't gone down.