This week, U.S. Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, sent a letter to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins urging the agency to reopen a Veterans Affairs (VA) clinic in Lewis County after the location at the Lewis County Mall was closed in 2021.
During the Joe Biden administration, Gluesenkamp Perez said she didn’t hear back from the VA after hand-delivering a letter to both then-Secretary Denis McDonough and the agency’s congressional liaison. Included with the letter was a petition with more than 16,650 signatures from veterans, caregivers and community members urging the VA to take care of Lewis County veterans by reopening a clinic, a news release from Gluesenkamp Perez stated.
Veterans in Lewis County have told the congresswoman they are often forced to wait for hours on hold for appointments scheduled months away that require hours of driving. She said she has also spoken with patients and providers at the VA Puget Sound Mobile Medical Unit that visits Chehalis one day a week with the capacity to serve just eight veterans.
“By closing the Lewis County Community-Based Outpatient Clinic and replacing it with an inadequate Mobile Medical Unit, the VA Puget Sound Health Care System has put lifesaving care out of reach of many veterans. For these reasons, I urge you to reopen the facility in Lewis County,” Gluesenkamp Perez wrote in the letter. “In return for their service to our country, we must uphold our promise to ensure veterans have the access to health care necessary to lead a full and healthy life after their time in the armed services has ended. I am gravely concerned that the VA is not upholding this promise for the veterans of Lewis County. I stand ready to work with you to address these issues.”
Nearly one in four veterans in Washington live in rural areas, and there are roughly 2.7 million veterans in rural areas across the country who are enrolled in and rely on the VA’s health care system, according to the release.
Gluesenkamp Perez co-led the bipartisan VET MEDS Act to support veterans’ access to VA-certified specialists and examiners in rural and high-need communities, which was signed into law as part of a larger Senate package in 2023.
