María Elvira Salazar: “I thank the gentlewoman. If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, today I would also like to address the issue of…”

“I thank the gentlewoman. If the gentlewoman will continue to yield, today I would also like to address the issue of backlogs, and I would like to mention another troubling fact that we are facing with the VA backlogs. We have patients that are seeking medical attention and they are on waiting lists, and these waiting lists can take as long as 180 days to get through. Can't we do better than 180 days? Mr. Speaker, I will tell you a story about a friend of mine, classmate of mine in high school, who served in the military at the same time as I did. He called me when I was a State representative Colorado and mentioned that he couldn't get in to see a VA doctor and that he was having massive chest pains. And it was shortly after that that we were finally able to get him into the VA hospital in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And we were lucky because what the doctors told him was that if he had not gotten the immediate medical attention, he would have died within 5 days. They performed heart bypass surgery, five bypasses, the next day. So it scares me that nearly 25 percent of the cases that are waiting have been pending over 180 days. I think this means that almost 100,000 veterans in this country have been waiting to find out how they can access the system. And I do not think that that even begins to account for the hundreds of thousands of vets waiting just to get in to see a doctor. Mr. Speaker, I think this is wrong, wrong, wrong.”