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Collins Testifies at the House Veterans' Affairs Hearing on VHA Reorganization, Feb. 11, 2026

February 11, 2026 · The Union Herald · 2:15:13

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

What happened

VA Secretary Doug Collins testified before the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs on February 11, 2026, at the committee’s hearing titled “Opportunities with VHA Reorganization,” in The Union Herald’s carry of the session. Collins appeared with Under Secretary for Health John Bartrum, Assistant Secretary Mark Englebaum, and VHA Acting Chief Operating Officer Gregory Goins, and was sworn in with them before testifying. The chairman opened by asking the Secretary to commit to making himself available to testify before the committee as the reorganization and broader VA changes proceed — the committee’s standing demand for continuing oversight of the plan.

Collins’s opening statement made the case for the reorganization in his own terms, as he stated them: the VA is the largest health care system, but sometimes runs, he said, as if it has one hand or one leg tied behind its back — it is time to change that, time to modernize it, and time to get on with it. Questioning worked through the plan’s central mechanic, the consolidation of the Veterans Integrated Service Networks from 18 to five, with the department explaining, as its witnesses stated it, that going from 18 to five with the same scope would be a big problem, and that the new structure — built, they said, on market research across public, private, for-profit, and nonprofit systems — places within each network an entity focused directly on care delivery and coordination without competing priorities. The ranking member closed the opening round with the opposition’s charge, as he stated it: that the department should seize the chance to course correct.

Why it matters

This is the House-side examination of the RISE reorganization, two weeks after the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee opened its own RISE hearings on January 28, 2026, in the hearing paged elsewhere on this site. The authorizing committee in the House heard the same 18-to-five network consolidation defended by the same Secretary — and began, as the Senate had, by asking what benchmarks and continuing testimony the committee can hold the department to while the plan is carried out over the next two years.

Scoreboard watch

Scoreboard watch: the RISE consolidation as examined on February 11, 2026 — the Veterans Integrated Service Networks moving from 18 to five under a structure the department described as market-researched, with a care-delivery entity inside each network — and the chairman’s opening demand that Secretary Collins commit to returning to testify as the changes proceed. Flagged for the scoreboard editor; no entry is published from this page.

Sources: The Union Herald, “House Hearing on Opportunities with VHA Reorganization” (carry of the Feb. 11, 2026 hearing, embedded above; hearing title and witness list per the upload description; testimony as delivered by Secretary Collins, the accompanying VA witnesses, and members of the committee).