If you listen to Veterans Affairs Secretary Bob McDonald, you would think getting veterans the health care they need in a timely manner was a partisan issue. If you listen to GOP House Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Jeff Miller, R-Florida, you’d think veterans’ health care was a partisan issue.

That is the problem.

Both sides blame the other for partisanship. Meanwhile, veterans wait and wait and wait. They wait for someone to reduce the backlog of patients waiting to be treated. They wait for someone to change the archaic laws that prevent staff from doing their jobs. They wait for someone to break the logjam on appeals of disability claims.

McDonald told the USA Today network of newspapers that Congress has delayed two dozen pieces of legislation he calls “essential” to reform the VA. The Obama-appointed Republican, former chairman of Proctor and Gamble, West Point grad and army ranger points to partisan roadblocks to VA reform.

He told the news organization that he sees veterans bills set up and attached to a “particular ideology” without bipartisan support. He says even bills backed by veterans’ organizations do not escape the partisanship.

He described the “gotcha game.” “If you say the wrong word, the political opposition tries to exploit it in order to embarrass the administration,” he told the news organization: “It wasn’t something I was familiar with in business.”

That wasn’t always the case, McDonald said. When he was first appointed, it came on the heels of a VA waiting list scandal that eventually caused the then VA secretary to be removed. And for a while, Congress seemed motivated for reform, but he says they passed a flawed bill — the Veterans Choice Act.

Now, there appears to be an ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans with the GOP wanting to allow some vets to go to private doctors while Democrats favor a more restrained version of that idea. It has gotten back to government vs. private sector philosophy, reminiscent of the school choice debate.

We agree with McDonald on one point: “We’ve got to stop using veterans as political pawns.”

It’s incumbent on both sides to come to reasonable agreements on improving VA health care. This shouldn’t be rocket science.

— Mankato Free Press, Oct. 5