This Vet Filmed Himself Trying To Get A Doctor’s Appointment At VA. It Wasn’t Pretty.

More than 2.1 million people read Moulton’s post and watched the video. More than 20,000 people shared it. Within a few days, the VA fixed the phone system at its Bedford facility and Magnasco was able to make an appointment. And Moulton suddenly had a dozen new co-sponsors on his bill, the Faster Care for Veterans Act, which would make it easier for vets to schedule their own VA appointments. He’s up to 19 co-sponsors, both Democratic and Republican.

“We had a good number of co-sponsors before, but several of my colleagues said they heard from constituents about the video who encouraged them to get on the bill,” Moulton told The Huffington Post on Friday. “We’re just delighted.”

His bill would require VA to run an 18-month pilot program that lets veterans in certain networks use an app on their phone to schedule or cancel VA appointments themselves. If it sounds simple enough, that’s because it is: these apps already exist in the private sector and have been successful. Moulton said it makes way more sense for VA to adopt this technology than to do what he discovered the agency was preparing to do.

“They were planning to spend $623 million developing their own app,” said Moulton. “This is available today. God knows how long it would take them to spend that.”

VA has fallen short with its technology systems for years. A computer system glitch has been denying health care to tens of thousands of combat vets, who are entitled to free health care. A document leaked to HuffPost in July revealed that nearly one-third of 847,000 veterans with pending applications for health care had already died. More recently, a February report by the VA’s Office of Inspector General found that a VA suicide hotline sent callers to voicemail and did not return some calls.

Moulton said he hasn’t been able to get an answer from VA on why they would spend hundreds of millions of dollars developing an app to let vets schedule their doctors’ appointments when these kinds of apps already exist. He said it seems like VA just prefers to have its own proprietary systems.

“They gave a variety of silly excuses,” he said. “None of it makes sense.”