Doug Collins
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Guys like me don't trust the VA. We just don't. You're not going to be getting your sex changed at the VA anymore. That's not what our services are for, and everything that we're taking money-wise away to that would take away from money that I could be spending on something else that are helping vets directly who are not even getting primary health care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Let's just ponder for just one second that that many people, and we're talking thousands with each congressman, each senator, a year calling about a organization that is supposed to be already set up to give them what they have earned, to give them the benefits that they have earned through Congress action. This is none just dreamed up by a president. This is all from statutory law.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But yet having to call them because they can't get the help they need. Only in Washington DC do we call that normal. Only in Washington DC do we call that okay. I call it failure. And I've called that out since the day that I got sworn in. that we're not going to allow anymore this discussion, that it's okay to have to call for what you should be getting already.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And after a while, about a year or so ago, he said, look, I think you need to come with me. And he just said, you know, if you've ever been around him, he's just, I just want, you need to come with me. And this was a year out. And I said, Mr. President, I said, let's get you elected. We'll talk about whatever you want to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Now, if you don't want it, don't take it. Go other way. That's why we have choices. That's why we have other things to do. But when it gets into the stuff that you're talking about, this goes back to that culture argument that I was talking about to start with. It gets into the situation where we've just sort of done it this way. And the argument at the VA is, well, everybody complains.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Everybody does, rightfully so. Even if they're new employees, they get, well, the VA is awful. And there's been a lot of problems and probably a lot of stuff to back that up. I'm not going to disagree with you. But there's also a lot of times when you've got the ones who are trying to do it are getting bogged down in the people trying to get in a system that is broken. So it'd be like me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I do a lot of counseling. I have it for years, of course, when I was pastoring and a chaplain and everything else. And if you, in a relationship, the relationship starts, let's say, with a man, a husband and wife, and a member, it doesn't matter if they're military or not, but if they have a relationship and they have an issue in which one does not trust the other,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And you come into that position, then they've now developed into a problem where they don't talk, they're fighting, they're maybe going to get divorced or breaking up, whatever. And then I walk into the room and I say, I want to help you, but the only thing that I can give you, the one thing you got to have to fix the relationship is the one thing that's broken.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
To fix a relationship, you got to have trust. If you can't have trust, you're not going to fix a relationship. You can smooth it, you can paste it over, you can do whatever you want to do, but you got to have trust. In the VA, we're similar situation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
in a sense that people have for so long said, I have to do it by this prescribed method, by this prescribed way, or there's gonna be a congressional person say something, or do something, or I'm gonna get complained about, or we're gonna do this, or the union says we gotta keep your job, so you just keep doing whatever you're doing, we'll protect your job, and go forward.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So when it comes to new ideas, There's, you know, there's some good things that you would never hear about. But when it comes to ideas such as you're talking about with a new generation of warfighter, this new generation of warfighter doesn't come that they're starting to come to the VA. If they have issues of prosthetics, they have issues of, you know, they've lost limbs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And after that happened, we had some conversations and some other ideas that was thought about. But then... I had some ideas about this, and it came about, and I said, you know, this will be a good spot. It takes my career, takes my passions, and puts it in a position that is, as most well know, is a politically sensitive department because of Congress and everybody on the veteran thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
They've done stuff like that because there's some of that we do probably as well, if not better than most anywhere you're going to find. But when it comes to other areas like the traumatic brain injury, to like the issues of sleep deprivation, the issues of addictions, those things, we're stuck in a system that is not allowing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Now in the Bronx, there's a clinical study on psychedelics that we've actually been a part of, and it's working. We're seeing tremendous change. Bobby Kennedy, who's now the new HHS Secretary, Health and Human Services Secretary, he and I sat in my office two weeks ago and talked about this very issue. And how do we get it incorporated in?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Some of it we're bound because we're actually a health care, actually hospital health care organization. We're bound by some of the laws that Congress has made that have bound us into what we can use and what we can't use. I'll use a big example there is marijuana. Marijuana has always been a fight treatment, you know, in some areas.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And you've had a lot of, you know, congressmen say we're not going to do that. We're going to keep it where it's at. And so that it binds us a little bit. But in one of the areas I'm looking at to get what you're talking about is a number of years ago, Donald Trump actually promoted a thing called right to try.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It was legislation in which if you were dying, if you had other issues, why not let you try something? What are we hurting here? And if it works, then it's a miracle and we're good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We're actually exploring right now, among the many things that I'm shoveling as fast as my shovel can shovel, is to see is there ways under right to try that we can expand some of those programs right now into psychedelics, into others, treatments ranging from hyperbaric to everything else. It says, is this working? You know, is it working? How do we expand it out?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We know from case to case, like what you just talked about, that it is working. We know from experience that in some people, this is, you know, a dead on treatment for what they need. But I've got to get a mindset change that says, and this is what I'm facing almost all the time is, well, you can do that, but there's a risk.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Sean, getting up out of bed in the morning and going to the bathroom and taking a shower is a risk. I'm going to fall and bust my head and die. That's a risk. Getting up and walking and getting a car is a risk. I want us to help the people who need help. But then there's also another generational issue we're having right now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And the generational issue is something that's going to be a little bit harder for me to tackle. Because it's not just the VA assimilating itself to the the younger warfighter, the GWAT fighter, my generation fighter, your generation fighter, who are not joiners. We don't join Kiwanis. We don't join Rotary. We don't join, you know, for most of this generation, they don't join the VFW.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
They don't join the American Legion. They don't do those things. They go with their buddies. They're drawn to nonprofits who are actually doing something on 10% margins instead of the opposite way around. 90% of what they do is going to fixing something instead of 90% going to fix the organization. 10% may be helping. These are kind of things that we got to deal with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So now I've got to get them back just like you to say, what can I do inside the VA to make enough change that I can get another shot, that I can get another shot to say, look, if you want the care here, fine. But if not, we're going to pay for it in the community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
See, that's another issue that the previous administration, the last four years have been horrific for expansion of care, which Donald Trump promoted in his first term and I voted for when I was in Congress. They just went away from it, Sean. Because it's a mindset. You've got to understand the mindset of the VA. And the mindset that...
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I said, I think we can manage this because we're going to have to make some change that actually matters. And I said, we're going to have to work at it hard, and I think we can do that. So he agreed, brought me in. We discussed it for just a little while, and then I asked him when he said, he said, you want to do it? I said, yes, sir. I said, what do you want me to do, sir?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The Biden administration and the previous administration spent tens of billions of dollars, well over $100 billion, and tens of thousands of employees, well over $50,000 in the last four years alone. Four years. And you know what? Our metrics have either just stopped or they've actually went backwards.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So all these people that are screaming, you know, that, you know, you can't cut anybody, you can't change it. Well, you've tried that now for the past 10 years. And you know what GAO says, government accounting offices said, you're on the high risk list. VA has been on the high risk danger list of race fraud and abuse and poor quality healthcare in many of our facilities for 10 years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
That's just unacceptable. But yet, the past three or four weeks, if you've watched any of the headlines, I'm being skewered and pillared by some of our VSO community and some of our members of the Senate and House that you can't change, you're gonna hurt wait times, you're gonna hurt, you've done that already. Our wait times are not where they need to be. Our backlog is too high.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It was under 60,000 when Trump left office. It's over 225,000 now. And that's with all the numbers I just told you. This is just bull crap. We can't keep doing the same thing the same way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So really what those folks on the Hill and some of those outside agencies and groups are saying is the VA, oh yeah, we know it's bad and you just gotta keep throwing stuff at it because it protects our jobs, protects our workers, and protects the system.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, because a lot of it, think about that organizational structure. Where is most of that organizational structure going? You know, I've been told since, you know, we started the confirmation process and we started asking these questions, well, PACT Act did this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And he said, just take care of my veterans. That was it. Nice. You don't tend to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
PACT Act forced us, you know, and by the way, that was Biden, thought of it at State of the Union, a few months acted it, not really thinking about cost. And by the way, When the House and Senate, I speak Hill because I was up there for a long time. Here's what you do. You want to make somebody think you're doing something. You pass a bill.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
You leave a lot of the stuff in the middle, either unfunded or open-ended. You get the president to sign it, and then you declare it a victory. Never mind going to the actual agency that's going to have to do this and give them help and instructions on how to make it happen. But I was told that was why the monies and everything increased so much.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, I've asked, where are these employees that were hired for PACT at? I mean, if we've hired all these employees to do PACT, where are they at? And only get one-off answers, like, well, we've had to do something here. We can't. All right, I come here to share the truth. I'm just not BS anymore. I just can't. I don't know whatever. But I can't tell you where all 480,000 of those people are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I can't tell you. Now, here's the interesting issue. You were in the military. You were in the SEAL team. If you went to your commander or you went to your headquarters headship, they could actually look down a list. They could pull every base. They could pull every unit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
They could pull everything and by the line item tell you who was assigned where and what their billet number was, what their pass number was, and everything else. You would know exactly where they're at. I do not have an HR system that allows me easily to do that. Think about that for a second. Let that sink in when all these other issues we're talking about is out there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So I can't even, at this point, now I'm working on it. That's been one thing where I've already hit the ground running. I've got some people that are helping. We're going to try and fix that pretty quick. Because if I don't know where they are, then this organization is functionally... not ready for action. It's just not. And you've got a lot of things.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I mean, we've had organizational structure at the, you know, cutting bureaucracy at the management level in Washington and across the plains is going to be something that was one of the first looks we're going to be. I don't need six people. I mean, it'd be like, I'm trying to put this in maybe ways that your guys and fucking gals would understand and watch this podcast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And listen, it would be almost like having in one unit having six from Air Force, having six shirts in one unit. Which one do you go to? Who answers to who?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And then also, having two or three chiefs above the six shirts to say, well, go get that approved, go get that approved, go get that approved, go get that, oh, and then, by the way, we'll have to go find the, we'll get the wing commander to sign off. So from an Air Force perspective, it's just bureaucracy layers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Some of these were started for real reasons, you know, that, hey, we need to manage our, like, central division care, which is our division. But they were supposed to have 20 and 30 people. Now some of them have three and four and 500. They just grow for the sake of growing, but nobody has called it like I'm trying to call it now in a real sensible way, is to say, what is our return on investment?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Are we helping a veteran? Is the veteran being helped? Not a press release from the Hill, not a bill that says you think you're doing something, but are we actually doing stuff that allows the veteran choice? By the way, the Mission Act, what we talked about, is to let you go out in the community. We're going to pay for that because you've earned the benefit.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We're going to make it where you can go out into the community and get the care you need. But yet over the last previous administration, we have documented it, and we're going to be rolling out more of this, where we saw basically a turn toward de-incentivizing and actually keeping veterans from getting the care they need, even if it meant waiting longer. Sean, the more I dig, the worse it gets.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And we're right now making sure that we're starting to get out so that we can have a whole new culture shift to help the people we're supposed to be helping.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
If you meet certain criterias like distance and time, what it was designed for is especially those who are away from a VA health clinic or a center where they can get it quickly. What they can do is a real simple checklist to see, do you qualify that? And most you do in different areas, especially specialty care. And then here's where I don't like some of this, and I've not liked it for years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
One, we have a third party administrator, which we're actually looking at. Anytime you put another third party anything in there, it tends to bog the system. They're supposed to be finding community doctors. They're supposed to be finding the system where we send them to. Um, the VA technically still has a sign off right now where you see a VA dot and then I said, yeah, we, we agree.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And then he sent them. That's becoming a little bit of a problem because we're seeing, we've seen some issues in which the furrows were not happening. Okay. So I, again, I'm, I'm digging into this. It's not everybody, but I'm seeing it enough to develop a pattern here. You see it, you know, randomly you might think, no, but when you start seeing it enough, there's a pattern of, of, of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
what I call abuse of the law, basically. So you get that and then you go and then, you know, it's turned in, it's paid for just as if you were going to, you know, through the VA system itself. So these are out there, these parts have been there, well, Mission Act gave that, it expanded that, but you gotta also use it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I mean, I can give you the best rifle in the world, but if you don't use it, it's just useless to you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Think about it. That's what I'm asking. But I'm also bringing it back. Looking ahead, in five weeks of sitting here doing this job, I have been seeing the exact same, asking the exact same questions. And say, why is it you have to have a VA whisperer, so to speak, to get what should be honestly yours to stake and to take part in, okay? You're exactly right. I mean, right now, as we look at this,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
This is the concern that a lot of us are having. But how many government agencies are like this? Think about it. You're supposed to pay your taxes. I'll just use another, the IRS, you're supposed to pay your taxes, but yet you call the IRS hotline and they can't answer your questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The very ones who will put you in jail for not paying your taxes can't answer some of your basic questions about how to file your taxes. Well, as we get into the process of the VA, and I was just with a local vet center here, and one of the things I asked him, I said, tell me something
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Start telling me, getting up to me, tell me things that hinder veterans from getting the benefits or being a part of this system. Tell me what in our paperwork process, what in our setup is causing us problems because here's what we are seeing though.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
To those, unlike some experiences you've had, especially a number of years ago, but what we're seeing today, there's been an improvement, is that once they can get through the system, we're seeing general satisfaction rating among veterans of different generations saying, okay, this may not be, you know, they like the care. They may not be what I want.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It may not be for everybody, but 80, 90%, you know, saying, hey, this is okay. I'm getting what I need. Or the benefits, they're getting their package. But getting through, to it has been our problem. Getting us through that front line to say, this is an agency that is open.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Look, I don't have my phone with me right now, but if I had my phone with me right now, I bet your private insurance, I know my healthcare with my wife, who I've been on state health in Georgia forever. I can right now pull up on my phone, all my prescriptions, my doctor's appointments. I could talk to my doctor if I wanted to. We don't have that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Why is the large, and here's the other thing, we're the largest healthcare system in the country. By far. By far. Now, there's a couple privates that like to say they're close. I have 170 hospitals over almost 1,500 clinic, CBOX clinics, and that's not counting the mobile stuff we do and everything else. That's how massive this organization is. And they've all run on siloed issues.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I heard an issue today that was about just simple things as transportation. And when they were asked for help, they said, well, that's not a VHA issue, which is our health side. That's a VBA issue, which is our benefit side. Well, I'm here to say I'm the secretary of all of you. We're going to start acting like we're one company and not three companies working in the middle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But again, Congress has facilitated this. Some prior administrations have facilitated this. Because here's the thing, Sean. How many times have you run across somebody who wasn't a veteran? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And a great part about it is he's my VA employee who helps me with liaison to them, which is a great thing because we've incorporated the whole work of what I think the president's new vision is. is into our organization in a way that works with us and not against us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So my, one of the things I'm starting, starting right here with you, I'm starting with other things that we're going to be doing. I'm trying to reach that veteran who's sitting out there who's saying, you know, screw the VA. I went over there one time and they didn't even treat me like I was human. Or that was their perception. You know, look, everybody's got a perception.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And, you know, that may be your perception that you wasn't treated well. It may have been a bad day for them, bad day for you. But then they're sitting in their home and they're self-medicating or they're going off doing destructive things, they're going to end up to the point where they don't see a reason to go on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But if they listen to your podcast, if they listen to somebody, I'm going to sit here and say, look, folks, let's get help. Let me send somebody. Go to an organization you trust. Call your battle buddy. Call your airman. Call your wingman, whoever it is. We've got to get out of this stigma that we don't touch people that are saying they have problems.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I mean, think about your friend that you just talked about. He's not going to run out in the front yard and say, hey, I'm really not able to function today. They're not going to do that. But we got to find them. We got to hit ways that people like his wife and others have the ability to reach out to somebody and say, here's real ways we can help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And get back to the simple fact of, hey, are we actually treating this as what it is? And that is a serious condition brought on many times by things that were out of their control or what they saw or what they didn't. I was in Nashville today at National Songwriters Association. Some folks I've known for years who write country music.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I think that's one of the things that there's this idea out there that, you know, there's this ominous, you know, thing happening in D.C. And the truth of the matter is, no, I'm still the secretary of VA. It comes through my desk. We make decisions. And mine will always be for the veteran. And then, you know, how that works out to our VA employees.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Some of them write songs all over the world for stuff you hear on the radio all the time. And there's a couple of organizations that work with veterans, American Song, there's some others where they get veterans together and who have had years of not being able to express themselves, not being able, they feel isolated.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And they get them down, they start talking with other veterans and they start writing a song. They say, write a song. And they show them and talk to them about how to do that. I had a veteran today who told me, he said, been married 50 something years. He said, I was in Vietnam. He said, my wife never hardly knew anything about what happened. He said, I just didn't talk about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And he said, 10 years ago, somebody finally got to me. And he said, I sat down and I wrote this song. He said, and it was not the song itself. It's the action of putting it on paper. And he says, now I'm able to talk to her. I'm able to release that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
There's another gentleman, this is a Vietnam veteran, there's another gentleman there who, again, his kids, and you know the saying, how many times have people said, tell me a war story, Sean, tell me what you did, tell me what's cool. This guy was saying, he said he didn't want to talk about it. And his kids would ask him, granddad, dad, what are you doing?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And he couldn't talk about it, he got in this position. In a power of a song, where he wrote down what happened to him at Tet, way back when, When he saw his buddies burned up in a tank. When he saw that and you could see it as if it was today in his eyes. But then he was able to say, if you want to know it, then listen to this song. Listen to the words that I wrote down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
That's a totally different way to look at this stuff. We've got to reach the veteran where they are. And if it's hunting, let's match them with somebody that can talk to them and get them out on a duck blind somewhere or get them out in the field. If they want to do exercise, let them do that. Or if they just want to sit and get coffee or they want to go have a beer, do something.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
instead of just funding $588 million on programming, let's see if our program is actually being effective. I'm just not gonna sit here. I may do a lot of things right and a lot of things wrong in the next few years, but I will tell you this, I will not sit here for the next four years and spend that amount of money and do the same damn thing. I'm just not gonna do it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
How will you know if it's working? I'm going to see if my numbers go down. I'm going to see how many people are responding. I'm going to see if we're reaching people that we've not reached before. Because if we're starting to touch them, then we're going to start seeing them into our systems. I'm looking to use nonprofits. By the way, I'm non-discriminatory here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I don't care if they come to the VA or not. I want them to come to the VA because we've got resources to help them. But if they're willing to go to a nonprofit somewhere...
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
if they're willing to go down to their church somewhere, but they heard about it from this weird guy from Georgia who happens to be the secretary of VA, to say, go get help, it's okay, then we're gonna see our communities put back together better. We're gonna see people and families come back together. You're gonna hear it from your buddies. I'm gonna hear it from mine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Where we're seeing the most issue right now is, Sean, and this is something almost for any military person, anybody that wants to think about it, the first thing when you come into a branch or you come into anything, you're told about the culture. Okay, the culture is this. The culture, you will be a airman, you will be a Navy, you'll be a SEAL, you'll be a whatever it is, you've got the culture.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Because those people, we hear about them, but they're not getting help that they need because it's so quiet. I'll use an example for you. My daughter has spina bifida. She was born, she's 32 years old now. If she were to come in here and she rolled in her little chair, she'll knock socks off of you. She's got a smile, she's never walked a day in her life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I mean, you know, I've watched her not experience the quote normal, you know, going on dates and getting married and all that. I just, you know, I've watched it. Broke my heart. For her, she just gets up and goes every day. She goes to work five days a week, she works at a hospital.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But if you were to come in here, or we were to take her over here to the mall, people would come up to her and they'd feel sorry for her. They'd try to help her, they'd try to open a door, they'd try to help her get to what she needs. But if I was to stand up in that same mall and say, folks, I don't know what's wrong, but my mind's broke. We don't look to open a door for that person.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We don't look to run to them. Too much in our time is we're moving away from them. We've gotta change the whole scenario here, especially in the VA and our veteran community. For brothers and sisters who we served with, they've gotta know it's okay. You're not gonna be wrong in reaching out and giving somebody some help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And the person who needs the help needs to see somebody willing to sort of run the mile with them. If we can get that, that's how I'm gonna see results. That's how I'm gonna see bottom line. That's how I'm gonna see that our vet centers are getting maybe some more people. Or I'm gonna hear it in the community.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And we'll see it in our judges who are actually seeing these people in front of them because they've crashed their car while they were drunk. They've gotten to a domestic violence situation because they didn't know who they were hitting and they were hitting their own kid. This isn't playtime anymore for me, Sean.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We've got to seriously deal with this in this country, and we've got to deal with it with our veterans. So for me, that's the way I'm going to hopefully see it play out. Did I hear you say that you planned on using nonprofits to help? Yes. I'll use anybody that's willing to help. I'll use anybody willing to help.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
If that's a VSO, one of the big six VSOs or any of the others, if they're willing to get in the game and help and try new ways... I'm ready to help. I'm ready to use nonprofits. I'm ready to use somebody that's willing to come in and we'll work the barriers and we'll do whatever it takes to get there. Because here's the situation.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We're looking at a generation that is not functioning the way we did 20 years ago, even 10, 15 years ago. Because they're more influencer driven, they're more socially media driven, they're more, you know, we just saw that in the last presidential election. that Donald Trump won because he reached voters who nobody were going after.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
He was speaking to them on platforms that they had never heard before. So why would I not use things like this, or nonprofits who are, and I could name the many, but I wouldn't want to forget anybody. I mean, you got a lot of them out there that are putting good money to the actual end, putting lead on the target, so to speak, down range, and they're using very little of it for administrative cost.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, the only thing interesting is, in all fairness, Sean, culture is at the end of the pipe. It's what comes out of the pipe. It's what goes in at the top that gives you culture. There's this idea somewhere that you're out there that you all of a sudden, you know, you can just pop up culture. And that's just not true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And we don't do that. So if you've got organizations that have always been doing it, they want to try new ways, I'm all for it. But you've also got to be willing to get in and dig a little bit and know that you don't always have all the answers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Yeah. Look, I think one of the things here is that – doing that in such a way that encourages good work. Now look, some of our VSOs, they offer free help, we'll get you through, and I'm not criticizing that in a situation. But many times they're willing to go through a situation, why are we having to use so much help? I'm actually attaching it, hopefully attacking it at a different end.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Why do we need, as I said earlier, the VA whisper, why can't we do this easier? But until then, yeah, I mean, I'll look at any way I can to help organizations that are helping veterans get the services they need without having to join an organization, without having to do anything else, just get what they have earned. And also- I can tell you why.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
That's why that's happening. And that's where we gotta start rebuilding trust, in a system that has... I can't explain this enough, the frustration I have with a lot, a lot of people, out of that 480,000, there's many, many, many, many dedicated people who want to help our veterans, period, okay? They are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I promised them as Secretary of VA that they will not have a better advocate for the good work that they do and to do it right, to fight, to make sure we're doing what we need to do. But I'm also not gonna tolerate status quo. I'm also not gonna tolerate lower standards. We're gonna have higher standards. We're gonna push this up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
You've got to have people and ideas at the top that then permeate through the system, sort of like it, just like you were eating something and it comes out the other end. Well, it comes out as culture. And so really that's the first step for me. The first step is developing a culture that says, we've done it this way for so long. Is this still the right way to do it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But at the same point in time, it's going to take a holistic look at everything that we're doing. It can't simply be, how do we fix the third party helpers here? How do we fix the system itself? Instead of me having to hire a driver to get me to the grocery store because I don't know how to drive, how about we make it better while I learn how to drive myself?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And I think that's gonna be, but again, there's gonna be parties and equities that that's not the way they've done it. That's not the way they do their business model. Because if they have people that come to them, they either get help from outside agencies or other stuff. I'm finding a whole different world that I'm just getting into the background of, of how we're working this stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And folks, if you've earned a benefit, take your benefit. You've earned the benefit. But also there's a lot of more encouragement to go back and go back, and I think that frustrates a lot of veterans. And you've heard this like I have. I want it to be known, veterans are not victims. We're not. We chose. We went into the profession. We've done that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And now many of us and you and others you've talked about, we may have conditions now. We may have stuff that have cost us in that time of service. And that's why the system was set up. is to say, okay, we're gonna do something. The history of the VA was really set up for our veterans who were outside of cities and outside of areas where there were not hospitals.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The VA was set up because we had so many coming back in from World War I, and then of course, as it expanded through World War II, that weren't in areas where hospitals were. So that's how this sort of all started. We just sort of lost our roots a little bit. Because it's easier just to say, well, it's for the veterans, so let's just throw some money at it and let's throw some more people at it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But then let's legislate it to death that it can't get outside these boxes because we want to make sure that we're still in control. That's a big part of government issue that we have, not just the VA, but a lot of agencies.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, I think there's ways that we can look at that I'm exploring right now. We can do things together. I can say, look, this is a group that we're meeting with. What's your ideas? Bringing those ideas to me. I've already met with several that are saying... We have an example right now that is coming out without getting into deep details of that. They've had issues with data collection.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
They've had issues with stuff. And it should be something we should willingly be a part of. And for some reason, the VA chose to be a stumbling block there. So it's like, well, I'm now looking at that and saying, no, let's see if we can remove those stumbling blocks. Let's get the data we need. Let's make sure we have this out there so that we get good answers.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And that's, you know, look, I'm running against people who don't want to change. I'm running against, you know, media, union bosses, members of Congress and the Senate who just, you know, they've put in, here's the problem. They've invested so much in a system that's not working. that now it's hard for them to admit maybe we need to do something different.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Then there's also ways, again, as we look going ahead, is there ways that we remove some of the bureaucratic structure, find ways to then partner with, as you said, could it be through a grant? Possibly so. Or other ways to help other organizations help us get better. That's my goal. I don't want to simply put out this idea that we need a whole another layer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
You've had VSOs out here helping forever and you've had all these others now just bringing us sort of another layer because this group trusts this group better than this one. Why don't we actually look at the root cause? If you came to me and my fingers were turning blue and I was having, it was tingly and for some reason it looked like a circulation issue. Well,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The problem we've had lately is we just put your hands in warm water or we get them warm and we rub on them until they get the circulation back in them. Instead of realizing maybe there's a heart problem here. Maybe we're not pumping well. Well, I want to get back to the question is, is the VA heart pumping right? Are we putting things into place that help the veteran and not hinder the veteran?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And are we getting to a place, and I said this in my confirmation, I said, I want us to become a place where we reactively know to a reactively, let's get there, yes. Where we're actively saying, instead of saying, I'm not sure we can, to say, I think there's a way. We've got to have that mindset difference to say, look, you have benefits you've earned. You've had healthcare you've earned.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We're here for a reason. but we're not to make it harder. And I think that's become the adversarial system that nobody sort of talks about here, that it makes it seem, and again, perception, before anybody listens to this and screams, oh, that ain't the true world. No, it doesn't matter what I think, you think, or any other group thinks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
When the perception is it's broken, when the perception is it's bad, and when the perception is I'm gonna get told no, then that's the reality. Perception is reality to veterans. And we gotta break that cycle.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So all the things we're going to talk about today is going to come back to that culture issue. So that's why I'm out here talking to you. That's why I've been on social media, Twitter, anything else I can find. Just tell the truth. And I fought back against the lies. I think the sum of my first five weeks is you may have been able to be, the VA may have been a whipping post for a long time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
There's some certification. There's something to go through.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Is that a possibility? I think it's a possibility. I think everything for me is on the table right now. And that doesn't mean everything's going to get approved. That doesn't mean that it's going to happen. But for me, I want to say, okay, if we have these possibilities, that we're seeing the mentoring, the counseling, the treatments, especially stuff like that, that are working.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Can we partner with that? What's stopping me in my organization, either policy-wise or statutory-wise, what the law says I can and can't spend money on? Because there is some of that, and I'm never going to say there's not. But if it's something we can now try, then I'm going to be looking at this, and we've already started talking to these groups, to say, how can that be?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I'm going to go to my people and say, tell me what the problem is here. And if the answer is, well, we can do that better in the VA, I'm going to say, no, no, no, no, no. You're going to do what you're doing in the VA, but why can't I have people out here that can go try this? And how do we do it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Tell me, as I've changed my entire general counsel, which by the way, we have a lot of lawyers, I've changed their whole mindset into say, don't tell me no, tell me how to get to yes. If I'm asking you to get to a problem, you get me to yes, because I'm an attorney as well. I can get you to no quicker than you can. Get me to yes. Get me to a part where I can take what you're giving me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And so I'll go to our health people and say the same thing. Get me to yes. Don't tell me the standard line. Like we found out something today. We had to go. It happens almost every day. I have to ask the question, Sean, and this is how it gets very frustrating. I have to ask the question, is this policy from the VA or is it statute from Congress? Because there's a big difference here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Statute from Congress. That's our red line. I have to operate within the law. Policy, I made. I mean, if there's a policy that you can't have ice cream on Fridays, well, we made the policy. Guess what? You can have ice cream on Fridays. I can change that all day long.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So we've got to now delineate because many times in the VA, because they're scared of criticism, they're scared of what members of the Congress or the media or unions or anything would say about them. is that they'd much rather just say, no, we can't, instead of, well, why? And then if you ask them, well, the law just won't let us do that. Well, policy ain't law.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Some of it, I'll agree with you, probably needed to be. But nobody's ever stepped forward to fix it. So here's my thought to everybody. we're not gonna be your whipping post anymore. I'm gonna tell you the truth and I'm gonna give you the answers that we need to do. And I'm gonna take care of our veteran, number one, and I'm gonna make sure our VA employee is the best that we can.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We can change those kinds of stuff. So I'm willing to look at it from all angles to see if we can. And if it's treatments, then I think that's where we're going to have to make sure that we're operating, because I can't bypass a law that says I can't do X treatment and just give you money to go do it somewhere else. Right. I've got to work that out in Congress.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And that's where folks like you and others that can help me and also working with Bobby Kennedy over at HHS to get some of this stuff approved in different ways. Having a president who would be willing to say, look, let's do whatever we can. That's just when it's going to take the push of the veterans to say, these are the things that are working for us.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It doesn't work for everybody, but at least for these, it is working.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I think you're right. And I think that's what I want to look at. That's why I'm out in the field. That's why we're doing things like this. At times, five weeks feels like I've been there five years. And in five weeks, I realize... My God, I've been there five weeks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And I've had, in just that amount of time, we've had to deal with our first start of contract looks where we found, we went through 2% of our contracts, 2%, and found almost 580 billion, 900, a billion and a half, about a billion and a half that are contracts that were non-mission critical, non-mission essential. That's just in 2%. We've had to deal with that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I've had to deal with the probationary firings, which helped us begin this thing and get started.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
we're dealing things and you mentioned it earlier by the way we've had um the issue of the flags we've we've changed that policy so that we're we're back to one force under the american and pow flag is all we're doing we we've uh took the dei out we're doing that today even just as we're coming on we changed the policy on transgender you're not going to be getting your sex changed
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So it's a lot goes into it, but it's culture that has to start at the top and also has to filter down and buy in. And that's what I'm fighting the most right now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
at the VA anymore. If you're currently in treatment, we're gonna continue that what was started before we ever got there, just as the SecDefs did in his side, because we don't want anything bad to happen to somebody who's under those treatment. But from this point on, we're not changing your sex.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We're gonna treat you with respect and dignity if you come to the VA for your services, but we're just not gonna be participating in changing your sex. That's not what our services are for. And everything that we're taking money wise away to that would take away from money that I could be spending on something else that are helping vets directly. We're not even getting primary health care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
That's the things that we're looking at. So we're in the process of doing as much of this as we possibly can. And. So we're taking every new idea. I'm taking it back. Our team is starting to process it. And we're working toward this end of making it a much more accessible, much more idea friendly, if you would, VA. That restores trust.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I'm hoping that restoring trust in the VA is me using social media in every possible way I can to tell people what's actually going on. And this is that coming on your show, doing other shows and saying, going into the media and going on and saying, guys, no, I'm not going to let senators lie to you anymore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I'm not going to let union members, I'm not going to let the newspapers and legacy media tell you stories, which they, by the way, can't back up. This is what I've been fighting. I know we're on the I know we're getting closer to the target. Because the flack's getting a lot heavier. Because they don't want us on this, Sean. I mean, think about this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
If you redo this and get it done, in any circle of life in the federal government, is if you talk about a problem, you develop a group that says, this is my problem. And then all along, you never really get to solving the problem. Then what you've done is you've built a group. This perpetuates itself on what? The problem. So I don't care what group it is out there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
If they're not sort of in many ways trying to either put themselves out of business, so to speak, because they're solved the problem, as you said, or they're perpetuating the problem and then claiming they're the help for that problem, that's what we're fighting against.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And I want to make sure that we're in a position to where veterans understand that they, at least from the secretary level here, and what's going to hopefully permeate down through the ranks, is that this is not acceptable where we are.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
There's a lot of things we do well, and there's a lot of things that, frankly, the VA does probably better than private health care anywhere else because we just have more experience in it. But then there's a lot of things that we don't. So why aren't we partnering with the community? Craziest story I heard.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We actually have hospitals that are sitting across the street, literally across the street from world-class oncology, cancer centers, and we're worrying about hiring cancer doctors at the VA. I said, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard in my life. Just send them across the street and contract the care across the street. I don't need to hire the doctor. They've already got them over here.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But that's the kind of thinking, Sean. That's your thinking. When your mindset is organizational, and not patient, or in our case, veteran-centric. That's the kind of things you get.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Eye-opening. Because, you know, of course, he is very, you know, our Make America Healthy Again, you know, getting people, you know, getting the food additives out, getting those kind of stuff. And I asked him specifically, because we were talking about this, I said, psychedelics. Because he's, you know, his agency would have some say in some, you know, the studies and stuff on that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And it was really interesting. Bobby starts talking about this, and he says, one, he said, I was a heroin addict. He said, putting stuff in your body, he said, for me to begin to talk about you know, having something put in my body to quote fix. He said, I'm just, he said, I'm just, that's just nowhere close for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
He said, because of my past, he said, but then he wanted to explain a family member of his child of his who had an experience using psychedelics that changed his life drastically. And he said, I would have never thought this would have never saw, you know, it's sort of, I let him, I will let him explain his, the way he sees it. But he said,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
this is working he said i've changed my mind about this because he said i actually see it happening and see it work and he said in my own you know flesh and blood and i think that's the the part that you know for me began to be exciting a little bit and to see here's someone who is so sensitive to those issues of medication and one of the things too is and i think you see this as well
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The answer to people many times if they're having episodes, just this idea that the idea is that you can medicate them to health is problematic to me. I just believe it is. It doesn't mean that medicines don't work. That's not what I'm saying. I'm not saying go stop your medication. I'm not saying don't give them. But is there other ways to help in that regard that can reduce that dependency?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Yeah. And if we can, that'd be great. So Bobby's the same way. So for us, it was, I got a partnership now that he and I are gonna continue to work on from the research side and from the other. Also bringing, hopefully bringing DOD involved a little bit in this as well. Because that's part of our problem, Sean. We hadn't even really talked about this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The transition from DOD to civilian, or what we would term VA, our side, is really bad. We don't do this well. And it's not just the VA health or VA benefit. It's not just the benefit. We're not giving a lot of our young service members and even older service members the transition that they need. We send them through the programs. You do the briefings. You've been there. And is it really working?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And the answer has to be that probably it's not working like it should because we're seeing too many people end up in – suicidal issues, we're seeing too much end up homelessness issues or financial breakdowns, marriage breakdowns, because as much as for those of us in the military who can gripe about the structure at times, you take away the structure,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And even the harshest rebel who rebelled against structure would say, I need that structure. So I think that's where it's really changed for me in looking at how we do this and how we go about it. So again, having partners like that is going to be, whether it be at DOD, whether it be at HHS, or with us at the VA, it's going to be very important moving forward.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, the first thing we're going to do is, and I'm getting this information now. Again, this is a part of this. I've already had a few who have came in who've actually talked about it, who want to talk about it some more. And then we got this study that's being done in conjunction up in New York. I want to see if there's a possibility to expand that program. Where is it right now?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Again, some of this I'm getting – and, again, I'm not trying to be anything evasive here. I've got to get the knowledge of what we're doing and what we have not done. So I'm going to get that information and see. I know what the program you're talking about. I've heard about it as well. So let's get data on that, have our people start reaching out across the board and say, okay, what is out there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Then we've got to also then take that and look at what is – the structural limitations that I have. What is the VA structural problems to either entering into a larger study or entering into a trial basis or basically possibly even, as you said earlier, voucher funding or whatever that may be. What are my structural limitations that Congress has put on me there?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Is there structural limitations that says you can use X dollars for this, but you can't use X dollars for that?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
okay and then if there is and we find enough evidences in our place to do it then i'm going to go to congress i'm going to go to the house the house veterans affairs committee i'm going to go to the senate veterans affairs committee and i'm going to go to the to the leadership and say look these are things that i need changed y'all may not be able to agree on a lot of things here but these are some things i'm hopefully you can agree on give me the statutory ability
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Even if you want to do it on a limited basis to start off with, I'll take that so that I can actually start trying. If I find out I don't have some of the statutory limitations, then I want to know what policy-wise may be hindering this, or is there a policy that can make sure that we're working with partners to do this? Now, again, you said it earlier.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The fiduciary role I have, I take very seriously. You get close to a vet. And Sean, you may have heard me say this already in this discussion. I call them my vets and my employees. I don't do that to belittle. I don't do that. It's just personalized to me. If you get close to them, we're going to make sure you're doing it right.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
My fiduciary duty is I got to make sure that no matter how great you think your program is, I got to make sure that we're not opening something up that nobody else has seen. And that's just due diligence kind of thing. So we're going to make that happen.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
One of the things that was concerning me, and almost a sidetrack to what we're talking about here, is there's a lot of residential treatment programs. facilities in the private sector now because of wait times for some mental health issues that are now popping up, okay?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I got no problem with us, and Congress is sort of backing this up, and we're putting some more money in there for it, but one of the concerns is, is have we created a cottage industry for this now, because look, money in DC is like water on a pavement. It's gonna go to its lowest part. It's gonna find its way out, okay? So if all of a sudden people hear there's money in this,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
then there's always going to rise to meet that demand. But is that demand always good? No, it's not. Because they're doing it quickly, they're doing it for the money, they're doing it for the possibility. Not every one of them, but probably some. So we're having to deal with that right now in those kind of programs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And I'm having to deal with our folks to say, are we making sure that if we're using these, are they up to standard that we need to be at? Because if we don't, then we're going to be giving money to things that aren't working and in the end hurting us in the long run. And I think that's something that I've got to be aware of. So for me, it really goes down to that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
That's where we're already starting. We're going to have more meetings as we go about this to make sure we're getting the information and as quickly as possible start to find those solutions that we can do something with.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It's a, what do you call it, a target-rich environment?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Yeah, it never hurts. It never hurts to do that. Because, again, I've said this for years, the best spokesman for anything is the satisfied customer. Thank you. Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
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Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
but yet we've gotta get to a system in which we take out the middle people, we take out the processes, we get it streamlined into where VA has the control it needs to make sure fiduciarily we're doing what we're supposed to do, but not the control to where we keep it ourselves. There's a big difference there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
There's a big difference in signing off and agreeing, this is the condition, I see this, I'm gonna give this person a referral. Instead of saying, well, I see this condition, but let's see if we can get them back in in two weeks to talk to them again. You know, those kind of things. I'll just say this. In the coming weeks, you're going to see some more of this coming out from our office.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I would just say stay tuned. It's bigger than what I can even describe here. We got some other stuff coming out. And I'll just say, just bear with us there. We're working through this community care issue to overcome what we've had in the last four years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Yeah, the PACT Act was designed to address some of that. The problem is, look, the PACT Act was a good step into dealing with it. Look, I'm a burn pit guy as well. I mean, I was at Ballaud every day while I was there. You'd wake up in the morning. When I first got there, I don't know if it was your experience, I got there and I was like, why is it so hazy around here?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
You know, I thought it was an environmental, I'd never been in the desert kind of thing, so I thought, but then I got to realizing it was just the constant flow of the burn pit area that was going over our huts over there. This is what it was all the time. It was there all the time. I remember riding by it and you could see it burning. It reminded me of growing up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
in North Georgia where everybody in our neighborhood had the 55 gallon drums and had the bottom out and you throw your trash in and you burn your trash. I mean, I smell the same smells and worse that I was smelling in the burn pit that was used to be when we were burning plastics and crap and everything in the trash bin. So yeah, I think there's a lot to go on there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
What my concern was is they sort of took this from the 9-11. If you remember timeframe-wise here, we had a lot of exposure. So President Biden at the time got up in the State of the Union and said, we're going to address this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, all of a sudden they threw a bill together, which had already been worked on, but they sort of threw out everything that had been worked on and threw this bill together that... It's part good, but also very rushed. I'll be kind today. Okay, it was rushed and then thrust upon the VA to say, here, do this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Did you know part of that bill, I bet most people didn't know, do you know that that bill actually requires the VA to test every veteran? The test of were you near a burn pit, were you near toxic chemicals, were you near, they ask those basic questions that I'm supposed to ask every veteran I mean, there's over 18 million, 19 million veterans in this country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Only nine million roughly have been touched in any way by the VA. How am I supposed to find the nine million if they don't want to be found? But that's the kind of thing that was put in the bill. And I actually asked one, I happened to be in a meeting the other day with someone who actually wrote that bill. And they, I mean, they were nice about it, but they didn't really have a good answer.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And there's no way for me to reach these people. So I say all that to say that's the conduit around PACT Act was that looking for the diseases. Right now, we have basically permissively allowed almost every condition under that that if you have, that it's going to be found under the PACT Act.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Um, and then how treatment goes from there will be just determined on, on what, like everything cancers of the head, which technically there is no such thing as cancers of the head. It's specifics in there, but that we have a terminology of cancers of the head. Okay.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I mean, we've turned that when, in the previous secretary, uh, added in, I think it was a previous secretary and I was confirmed, but the, these, uh, presumptive conditions were added for hypertension and, um, prostate and everything else. Like,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Okay, I get it, but we're just sort of at this point, just say if you've been near a burn pit or you can answer one of these questions, you're just going to get health care. which is in some ways burdening the system a little bit and the benefit side, the disability side of this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But if that's what the intent of Congress to do is just basically give everybody disability checks for that, then that's what you're going to have to look at going forward. So for me, it's saying, okay, what are the real medical consequences of this? What can we do to treat this? This was also something I brought up that Bobby Kennedy and I actually talked about as well.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But we talked about it from a vaccine perspective, but also some others. It's just saying, how can we look at these conditions and begin to know that what we're seeing and the treatments are effective to what we have? And I think that's the question sometimes never asked. So for me, I'm having to live with PACT Act and say, how do we fix it?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It's a good thing to get these people in who have these cancers, have this, to make sure we're treating them, getting the health care they need. in the community or with us. So that's really where, for the burn pit people and for the toxic exposure people, we're keeping that commitment. And contrary to lies, we didn't cut any toxic exposure funds.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The Congress just actually added in more money in this latest CR that was just done. So again, I cannot tell you the magnitude of lies that I deal with on a daily basis. Yeah. Now we've got a big one coming in, too, and not a lot I can tell you as much about this. We're trying to implement that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It's the Dole Act, Elizabeth Dole Act, which is going to deal with caregivers at home and other things that have been building up over time. I'm now trying to figure out how do I do that and process it properly because some of it we were not funded for. Here's another trick. Look, I've been in Congress, so I participated, fortunately, in this. We pass stuff, but we don't fund it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
And so we just expect the VA, which, by the way, you're complaining about how much money we have now, but now you're telling me to do something that could be literally billions of dollars, and I'm having to find the money. So this is, you know, but I'm having a ball. It sounds like it. Because I believe in what I'm doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Yeah. That's what, I mean, that will be what we fight for is to get it reallocated. Some will, some, you know, if you get to the point, probably would go to something differently. I'm not going to say all we'll just stay in all that, you know, especially with what we got going on, that might be my preference.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But again, also is, is the workforce slimming and the monies that we can spend going to where it needs to go. And I think that's going to be the big key for us is making sure that now, again, One of the things is Congress, again, holds the purse strings. In actuality, they are the ones that pass the budgets and put the monies in there and everything else.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So we've got to make the decision so that we do have cuts, we do have things that don't continue on in our budgets. Because the one thing we've not talked about, and we've had senior military leaders and others, our national debt and deficits are a national security issue. We can't keep going the way we're going in this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
The VA will always be one that's going to probably be looked at is to make us as efficient as we possibly can. And we're going to do that, and we're going to do our part. We're already well ahead in working that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
But also I have to be, as I've told our staff many times, I've told the White House and everybody else, as I said, look, we're going to do it in a measured way because at the end of the day, I'm dealing with people. I'm the only agency up there. that has to deal with cuts, but actually also has to look at doctors and nurses and families in the face and say, we're taking care of your health care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
No other agency has to do that. D.O.D. is about as close as I would say that comes to having to deal with the sort of real viral side of people and the decisions that he makes, life or death kind of decision, where does my son or daughter get sent kind of thing. I'm on the other end of it in which that
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
It's very – we've got to be very careful where we make it so that we're not hurting veterans and we're giving them the ability to get the disability benefits or the other benefits they've earned. So I take it very seriously, but do I think we can get a large amount of that number? You better believe it. I do believe it because – and one of the reasons I know is because everybody that's coming up,
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
who's saying, oh, well, all the wait times are going to go up and all the backlog is going to go up. Well, I just have four years of proof that tens of billions of dollars and tens of thousands of people didn't solve your problem. So why don't we try it a little differently here? Let's give them a better organization. Here's a better thing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Like I said earlier, give me an HR tool that actually lets me know how many people I have and where they're at. Give me a computer system that can begin to screen disability benefits and others to help the actual person so that we can take the easy ones, the tinnitus and everything. Let's take those off the table. Let's quit griping and going paperwork and paperwork about that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Let's take the easies off the shelf so that we can get to the harder ones to determine their level of disability. Let's do things with AI, never taking a human component out of it, because there's always, especially with veterans, there's complex cases.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So I'm always gonna have the person there to go through that and make sure that we're getting what we need to get and not over give but not under give either. But why don't we use computer and AI training to actually say, let's do this better and do it quicker. I'm all for doing things better and quicker, Sean. Look, what's the old saying? Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
That's where we got to be here. And I'm committed to doing that. I'm asking questions that others may have asked. I'm just going to be doing it differently. Because as I've told all our folks, I sit here with you as about as content an individual as I can be. I've had 59 or 60 years of life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I've had the experiences of being around the world, sitting with presidents and kings and doing things in Congress and being with a lawyer, helping people in court, standing beside them on their worst day and helping them out. I've had the privilege of pastoring a little church that grew into a little bit bigger church. I've had a wife that's been with me for 36, almost 37 years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We've been together 38. I have three kids. I'm at the point in my life where I want to help others get better. I'm at that point I want to turn around and say, for all this experience and where I've been, I want to make sure we're doing something right. I get as much joy out of somebody that's working for me coming to me and saying, hey, we got this done. That's the celebration for me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Because I've really come to the conclusion over years of working this and believing this one statement that if I help enough people in life get what they want, I'll get what I want. Well, now we're at a place to really make this happen. So for me, I don't know what will happen if I get to stay for four years in this. I don't care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I get four years to make a difference in the life of my brothers and sisters and warfighters that gave something to this country. And now my job is to make sure that that country who promised them things, who set it up, actually does it. I can't think of a better calling. And I'll take the arrows. I'll take the slings.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I'll go to Congress and have the other side of the aisle yell at me and tell me I'm bad. That's fine. You come at me. Because I'm going to do the best I can with what I have, with what they gave me. But the one thing about it, Sean, is this. You're not going to kick around the VA anymore without offering solutions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
You're not going to scare my veterans, and you're not going to scare my employees without this secretary calling you out when you are wrong. And I've seen it so much in the last few weeks. It's disgusting. I've had sitting senators lie repeatedly about who was let go.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I've had House members and senators lie repeatedly about, as I said earlier, appointments getting put off, surgeries getting put off, delays are already going up. It's been three weeks when 2,400 people who never touched any of those things were laid off, and you're telling me this is a problem? Where have you been for 10 years when GAO says that we're as screwed up as we have been?
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Don't tell me that anymore. We may not get everything I want to get accomplished. I may not be able to help every veteran, but we're damn sure going to try, because it's not going to happen anymore.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, I think it comes about a lot of things. The president and I had known each other for a while. And when I was in Congress for eight years, especially those last few years, I was in leadership and I was the ranking member of the VA, not the VA committee, but the Judiciary Committee, which put me in close proximity to the president because we had to deal with the sham Russia stuff.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
We had to deal with Mueller. We had to deal with impeachment. And so he and I got to know each other pretty well. And from my fighting during those days to keep the truth just out there about what we were seeing. And so we just had developed a closeness and we kept it up over the time when he was out. And when he started campaigning again, I would be out there and I'd show up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
Well, look, Sean, you've expressed, as you were doing there, what you're seeing with your friends, you're seeing with everybody else, and I think it's the battle we face. Okay? When I was in Congress, we'd have, I think the interesting part, and this is one of the things I told all the senators, especially when going through confirmation, which I had to go through to get this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
I said, 60% of your constituent calls, in other words, 60% of the calls to your office for help, in some way involve the VA. Either VHA, our health benefits, or their other benefits, disability benefits, other things like that. 60%. Some of them looked at me like, no. And it was interesting, the staff would be sitting in the side going. 60% of what? 60% of all their calls.
Shawn Ryan Show
#187 Doug Collins - United States Secretary of Veterans Affairs
So like a phone call to a congressman or a senator. I need, I'm having trouble. 60%, okay? And some would actually be higher, some actually maybe a little lower. So just average out around 60%. Like I said, some of the members were like, I don't know. But yet their staff was sitting there and said, yeah, it is. It is, because they hear it all the time. Think about that for a second.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL
There's one that's going around the media right now about veterans benefits being cut. I'm the Secretary of VA. I'm going to tell you right now, that's not happening. They can do hypotheticals all they want. I'm telling you about reality. Reality is veterans benefits aren't getting cut. In fact, we're actually giving and improving services in our Veteran Benefits Administration.
The Ben Shapiro Show
Ep. 2138 - Tulsi CONFIRMED, Trump Pushes UKRAINE DEAL
They're actually clearing cases quicker. We're doing what we're supposed to be doing.
The Dan Bongino Show
Spending Bill Passes House And Everyone Loses Their Mind (Ep. 2440)
Okay. Well, just think about what it says here. Elon Musk, aide, is now working at VA accessing computer systems. Ooh. Well, that's a true statement. It is, because you know what? We don't make a Doge employee, which is funny because they're VA employees, a liaison. I was not told that.
The Dan Bongino Show
Spending Bill Passes House And Everyone Loses Their Mind (Ep. 2440)
As we look at this, Patricia, I want you to know something. When you look at this headline and you're accessing computer systems, I want to work with you a lot as we go forward. We're going to have a lot of time together.
The Dan Bongino Show
Spending Bill Passes House And Everyone Loses Their Mind (Ep. 2440)
but I'm not gonna have any reporter scaring my employees and scaring the veterans. And that's what this is doing. Let's get it right. I'm the most transparent VA secretary we've had yet. I'm on video, I'm on interviews, I do everything I possibly can to push back against everything I'm hearing. So we got a team that'll help you, but I need your commitment to help me too, okay?