David Shulkin

VA is actually the largest provider of telehealth services, 2.1 million visits last year, but we need to be doing much more.

The Veterans Crisis Line saves lives every day.

This is a terrible tragedy that happened to Tom Young, and should never happen, and is totally unacceptable.

The opioid dependence crisis is really a national crisis.

The acceptance really has been extraordinary because it saves a veteran from sometimes having to travel hundreds of miles.

There is no excuse for this.

Our numbers are going down while the rest of the country is going up.

The Choice Program is not working the way that any of us want it.

We actually can't do everything that VA needs to do because we need the hospitals--we work with affiliate hospitals--they don't have the infrastructure and they don't have the ability to pay for these.

I don't know enough to be outraged. I will tell you, Congressman, I am taking this very seriously.

Our goal is to make sure that you do not need to contact a person, that our systems recognize you as a veteran.

Today we are at 72 percent payment within 30 days. That is not good enough.

We need providers to want to work with VA, because, frankly, veterans need the private community.

We are very grateful for Congress' leadership in providing us the Choice program.

Senator, I think that is accurate. We are not saying that wait times overall are going to go down significantly or at all.

When VA Police Officer Greg Crenshaw arrived, Greg persuaded the veteran to take him as the hostage to protect Kathy.

Last Thursday at our Denver Medical Center's mental health clinic, a veteran took Nurse Practitioner Kathy Rittenhouse hostage.

The fact is that we withdrew the demotion action because of our administrative error and we have already reinstated the action.

I did not come to VA to do the easy thing, I came here to do the right thing.

I am not walking back on this. I made a commitment to you and to the veterans and we are going to see this through.

The $421 million that we are requesting... would be to fix the problems that currently exist in the Choice Program.

The law says what it says and the conversations that we have had over a long period of time confirm that.

I mean, one of the biggest concerns we have is the transition between the DoD and the VA.

In my prior life before coming to VA, as a community provider, we participated in health information exchanges.

We are not taking a wait-until-we-improve-the-system approach.