“Veterans must be at the center of our solutions. They must be empowered. They must be treated with compassion. And they are our priority.”

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (WA-05) met with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert McDonald today at her office on Capitol Hill. The Congresswoman addressed specific concerns regarding veterans’ access to care in Eastern Washington and proposed innovative ideas about how to successfully create a 21^st-century Department of Veterans Affairs. As a longtime champion for Eastern Washington’s veterans, she urged Secretary McDonald to embrace new solutions to ensure that America’s veterans receive the care they need.

“Secretary McDonald and I had a productive meeting today in which we discussed the very real problems facing Eastern Washington’s veterans—limited access to care, reduced hours at the VA Emergency Room in Spokane, and the upcoming closure of the VA clinic in Republic. I brought our veterans’ concerns and priorities straight to the Secretary—and we discussed numerous viable, long-term solutions that will help those who have served our country,” said Rep. McMorris Rodgers.

“I am encouraged by the Secretary’s sincere commitment to improving the lives of our veterans, and I look forward to working with him to enact meaningful reforms to an agency that has been outdated, inflexible, and mismanaged for far too long. We share an important belief: that veterans must be at the center of our solutions. They must be empowered. They must be treated with compassion. And they are our priority. We will work together to incorporate technologies like ZocDoc into the VA, expedite credentialing of medical professionals, expand physician recruitment, and fundamentally change the environment within the agency. That is how we can move forward with a 21^st-century VA—one that is permanently committed to putting veterans first.”