I was having trouble with my mental health for a while and I was at a point of despair, bordering on suicide. I know many of my classmates military know this feeling. Our experiences in uniform These can be ghosts that often come back to haunt us, even after we have healed.

I worked at my local VA hospital as a social workerso I knew the signs and symptoms of a mental health crisis. I also knew that I would not be comfortable seeking mental health care from the staff I worked with on a daily basis. A big part of therapy is feeling safe, and that wasn’t going to happen in my workplace.

Additionally, the wait time for an appointment, even though I was in the building every day, was outrageously long.

My preference and internal wait time qualified me for Community Care, a program that allows veterans to use their VA benefits with providers outside the VA system. Thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s historic VA MISSION Act, millions of veterans like me had a choice in our care.

The program is literally a lifeline for veterans who need more immediate attention, treatment closer to home, or care tailored to our unique needs. Under the VA MISSION Act, veterans had to come first.

But, in law enforcement, the VA rarely puts veterans first, and that is certainly not the case in my case.

My requests for community care were continually refused, further straining my mental health. I had the advantage of knowing the system, my options and how to defend myself. But even then, the VA bureaucracy won. Basically, I was told, “You get your care here, or you don’t get it at all.” »

This is what happens when bureaucracy wins: The VA system must remain intact at all costs, even at the expense of veterans’ health.

You may also be wondering what many veterans are wondering. If community care is available to veterans, how can VA stand in the way?

Once again, the complicit bureaucracy is to blame. Although community care was established by law in the VA MISSION Act, eligibility for the program was decided by regulation. The VA ignored or misrepresented the regulations from the start.

Documents Obtained in Freedom of Information Act Lawsuit revealed VA has manipulated how it calculates wait times to prevent veterans from being eligible for community care. The FOIA lawsuit also revealed that the VA actively discouraged veterans from using community care or went so far as to mislead us about our options.

Outgoing VA Secretary Denis McDonough told Congress he believes the VA should change access standards because too many veterans were using the program.

What I hear from all this information is that my needs, my care, and my life are less important than my stay at the VA. Veterans using VA feel like problems to be solved rather than human beings with unique needs.

Fortunately, there is a solution on the table: the Complete the mission statement. Recently introduced, this bill would build on the success of Trump’s VA MISSION Act by enshrining community care eligibility standards into law. This means that there is no longer a need to pick and choose from the VA on when to give veterans these choices.

The bill would require the VA to tell veterans when they are eligible for community care, ending the agency’s current practice of keeping them in the dark. The bill also requires accurate measurement of wait times and creates a self-scheduling portal so that our care is more firmly in our hands and not at the mercy of VA gatekeepers.

What excites me most is the bill’s requirement for a full-choice mental health pilot program. Veterans would be able to access mental health care whenever they need it, whether or not they meet eligibility requirements. This freedom to seek care is desperately needed as veteran suicide continues to impact too many of us – at least 17 per day.

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I wish something like this existed when I was contemplating suicide. This could have saved me months of struggling without care and thousands in expenses to see a therapist when the VA wouldn’t help me.

I hope that getting the Complete the Mission Act to the President’s desk is at the top of everyone’s priority list, whether in the lame duck session or the new Congress.

Jessica Villarreal is a U.S. Army combat veteran, social worker and strategic director at Concerned Veterans for America.