← Videos · Veterans

Collins Testifies at the Senate Veterans' Affairs Hearing on the VHA Restructuring (RISE), Jan. 28, 2026

January 28, 2026 · Forbes Breaking News · 1:56:16

Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube

What happened

The Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs held a hearing on January 28, 2026 examining the VA’s plan to restructure the Veterans Health Administration, in Forbes Breaking News’ carry of the session — the first of two hearings the committee scheduled on the proposal. Chairman Jerry Moran opened by naming the plan and its scale, as he stated them: the Restructure for Impact and Sustainability effort, or RISE, announced the previous month, represents the most significant reorganization of the VA’s health care system since the 1990s, designed to change how the VA manages and oversees care delivery across the country as it is implemented over the next two years. The department describes RISE, in the chairman’s summary, as an effort to reduce bureaucracy and red tape, empower local leaders, standardize operations, and strengthen accountability.

Questioning dug into the plan’s mechanics, including its consolidation of the Veterans Integrated Service Networks — the regional offices known as VISNs — with members pressing for what problem reducing the networks from 18 to five is intended to solve, what the regional offices’ roles become, and what benchmarks the committee can use to judge the result. Ranking Member Richard Blumenthal closed where the committee’s oversight had closed the previous May: reiterating the importance of facility-by-facility staffing data in each category and of the contract-cancellation data he said the committee had asked for repeatedly, and asking for a commitment to bipartisan meetings, which Collins agreed could be arranged.

Why it matters

RISE is the structural half of the Collins program — the workforce and contract cuts of 2025 applied to the health system’s org chart itself. A reorganization the chairman ranks as the largest since the 1990s, consolidating 18 regional networks toward five, will decide how VA care is managed for years; this hearing is where the Senate began testing whether the plan’s benchmarks exist.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the RISE restructuring as described on January 28, 2026 — VHA reorganization over two years, with the VISN consolidation from 18 networks to five as raised in questioning — and the committee’s outstanding data demands on staffing and contract cancellations. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: Forbes Breaking News, “VA Secretary Doug Collins Testifies Before The Senate Veterans Affairs Committee” (carry of the Jan. 28, 2026 hearing, embedded above; upload description identifies the hearing’s subject as the Veterans Health Administration restructuring; testimony as delivered by Secretary Collins and members of the committee).