David Shulkin

We are a system where I can tell you that nobody is doing more for behavioral health care in this country than the VA. ”

Accountability is a two way street. We can't just make it easier for us to fire people; we must make it easier for us to hire people. It takes VA an average of 240 days to complete the hiring process for executives joining VA from outside government. We are losing talented people because it simply takes too long. ”

We have about 360,000 employees in the VA health care system. It's the largest health care system in the country. And the negative attention that's been put on VA has hurt the morale of our workforce. And so what we're trying to do is to get people to understand that we're doing great work every day. ”

The first responsibility that we have to our veterans is to make sure those that need urgent care are getting care on time. ”