Barrasso hosts VA secretary to hear Wyoming veteran concerns

CHEYENNE — Wyoming’s high veteran population and rural landscape pose a unique set of challenges, veterans told U.S. Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., and U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins on Wednesday.

Representatives from various veterans organizations were invited to voice their challenges to Collins and Barrasso at a veterans roundtable, hosted at the Wyoming National Guard Joint Forces Readiness Center.

The concerns varied, including efficiency of services, quality of care, cost of care, transportation and staffing.

“This is a frontier state (with) extra challenges due to the distances,” Barrasso stated to the media following the event. “We have a high percentage of the population of Wyoming who have served in the military. And we’re doing a lot right to help our veterans, and we can always do better. We just heard ways to improve the system.”

The effort to hear from veterans follows last month’s announcement that the Department of Veterans Affairs intends to reorganize the management structure of the Veterans Health Administration with the goals of improving health care for veterans, empowering local VA medical directors, eliminating duplicative layers of bureaucracy and ensuring consistent application of VA policies across all department medical facilities.

“My hope is, by the time that I leave this job, that they’ll be able to say that ‘I’ve been to one VA, I’ve been to them all,” Collins told roundtable attendees. “You can’t say that right now.”

Wyoming presents many opportunities for Collins to make progress on his goals to reduce redundancies, ensure the quality of care and assure veterans that they should not have to pay to receive help from the VA, based on the issues local veterans and veteran advocates have brought to the table.

Russell Stafford, who spoke on behalf of the Wyoming American Legion, brought up communication issues within the medical system, excessively long wait times for care, and the needs of the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming, located in Buffalo, which is struggling to maintain veterans’ living standards due to lack of funding.

Lyle Wadda, who spoke on behalf of some of Wyoming’s veterans from the Wind River Indian Reservation, brought up serious transportation issues and trouble with access to buses to transport veterans.

Other veterans also discussed the challenges of transportation in Wyoming.

Having veterans in rural areas means that veterans in their 80s and 90s are looking at long, hard travel days to access their benefits, or they’re relying on inconsistent home care or transportation services, several veterans told Barrasso and Collins.

Wyoming Veterans Commission Chairman Kelly Ivanoff pointed out that while care should be the same in every state, Wyoming’s unique landscape and population will require unique solutions.

“The difference in Wyoming is our veterans are in Medicine Bow, Wright and Lovell,” Ivanoff said. “We plan to travel in Wyoming as folks do in Afghanistan.”

Ivanoff, who served in Afghanistan, continued to say that Wyoming and Afghanistan have similar geographic travel challenges. Long routes over mountain ranges mean that a simple blood draw can become a full-day affair.

Collins addressed most concerns either by discussing what solutions were in process or promising to give the issue more attention outside of the roundtable.

One man brought up an issue with having to retake medical exams because the documentation of exams was not being properly shared between medical professionals. Others brought up “claim sharks” taking advantage of older veterans and convincing them to pay thousands for help that the VA provides for free.

Collins discussed the many ways these issues will be addressed in the reorganization of the VHA. With the reorganization, some local veterans are concerned about losing access to care, but Collins assured those present that there was no need to worry.

“I think the only concern about care that they need to be worried about is how much better care they’re going to get,” he said.

This story was published on Jan. 22, 2026.