DOGE cuts push VA mental health waits past 35 days nationally

A January 2026 Senate Veterans Affairs Committee report found that VA mental health appointment wait times hit a national mean of more than 35 days for new patients, blowing past the 20-day legal threshold set by the MISSION Act of 2018. The mean was measured as of January 6, 2026. States including Maine (61 days) and Maryland (54 days) reported more than double the legal limit.

One California VA outpatient clinic in Ventura told new patients to wait 134 days for a mental health appointment. Seven of 12 mental health providers at that clinic quit after VA Secretary Doug Collins imposed a return-to-office mandate. Remote work had allowed those providers to conduct telehealth sessions from private settings — legally and ethically important for confidential mental health care.

The VA shed more than 40,000 employees in fiscal year 2025, with 88 percent of those workers being frontline health care staff. The departed employees included roughly 1,000 physicians, 3,000 registered nurses, 700 social workers, and 1,500 schedulers who book the appointments that make mental health care accessible to veterans.

VA Secretary Doug Collins refused to provide wait time data at a January 2026 hearing before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. Collins told Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal he wanted "numbers, not narratives" — and then declined to supply them. Blumenthal's "Cuts, Cover-Ups, and Chaos" report compiled the state-by-state figures that Collins refused to present, demonstrating how oversight investigations can surface data that executive agencies want kept from public view.

The VA also claimed it had saved $120.8 billion by canceling contracts — a figure that exceeded the department's entire annual contract spending. The Senate report found the VA had counted contracts that were never actually canceled, including those for prosthetics and wheelchair services for disabled veterans. The inflated savings figure was presented to Congress as justification for the workforce reduction.

DOGE oversaw the decision to let 14,000 contracts expire and cancel 2,000 more, according to the lawmakers' report. The combined effect cut operational capacity while the VA publicly claimed savings it hadn't actually achieved.

The MISSION Act of 2018, passed with bipartisan support, set the 20-day wait time standard as a threshold triggering veterans' right to seek community care outside the VA system. Exceeding that threshold doesn't automatically direct veterans to alternative providers — it requires the VA to offer community care options, a process that itself has administrative delays and network adequacy problems. Community care spending was projected to reach approximately $34 billion in fiscal 2026, up 50 percent from 2025 levels.

Mental health wait times at the VA had been a persistent problem before the 2025 workforce reductions. A 2014 wait-time scandal at the Phoenix VA Medical Center — where staff falsified records to hide months-long delays — triggered the Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act and subsequent reforms, including the MISSION Act. The 2025 spike represented a return to pre-reform conditions in several states, reversing a decade of incremental improvement.

The DOGE-aligned restructuring at the VA followed an administration-wide push to reduce the federal civilian workforce through a combination of return-to-office mandates, voluntary separation buyouts, and targeted layoffs. The VA employs approximately 400,000 workers providing direct health care to more than 9 million veterans annually. The scale of attrition created operational strain that showed up most visibly in appointment wait times.