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Plagued with any efficiency despite its budget having been doubled in the last we 10 years. robert wilkie served in the pentagon under donald rumsfeld, worked for condoleezza rice it had years of experience on capitol hill and now he may have his toughest assignment yet. >> daily walk to high school with the woman who is now his wife, he passed by the fayetteville va hospital which were the inscription the price of freedom is visible here, made a big impact. >> reporter: this assignment is personal. his father was wounded after multiple tours of vietnam. >> he came back to us weighing have of ...

Inefficiencies. he worked for condoleezza rice and has years of experience on capitol hill. now he may have his toughest assignment yet. >> on his daily walk to high school with the woman who is now his wife, he passed by the fayetteville va hospital which bore the insubscription "the price of freedom is visible here." it made a big impact. >> for wilke, this assignment is person. his father was severely wounded after multiple tours in veto in an. >> he came back to us weighing about half of what he did when he left. i watched his recovery. it was agonizing. >> the problems at the va were spot...

It's a state decision. >> reporter: so the federal government can't say to florida, "you've gotta do the same thing." >> at this point under the law, no. >> reporter: what's more, lewis says states split their medicaid dollars between the poor and people with disabilities. she says it all adds up to a system that can't take that much weight. >> i think that the programs are overstressed with the numbers. i mean it's why we see wait lists. >> reporter: is that the bottom line, we just don't have the budgets? >> we have not addressed the need for long-term services and support in this country. >...

Into some of the day programs to see for ourselves. we said we were looking for a program for someone with autism who was aging out. this is what we saw. at one a group of adults gathered in a room doing very little. at another people with special needs are working gluing strips of rubber to metal. a staff member tells us they spend most of their day in this room. >> and outside the facility there's barbed wire. the staff says it's there for safety reasons. the thing is there are often huge wait lists to get into day-habs like these. >> somebody who works for the state told me not to look at t...

Say the va is broken, these long wait lists. it's not functioning. give people access to protest care so they have choice and they can get seen immediately. what's wrong with that? >> first of all what, does bother me as the former chair of the va, i talk to a lot of veterans. i was just in the veterans medical center here in vermont today. i talk to veterans all of the time. you know what they say? they say, of course, the va has problems. so does every hospital in america. oh does our entire health care system which is basically dysfunctional. but given all of that, you talk to the average v...