The Veterans Health Administration
Summary
VHA runs 170 hospitals and 1,193 clinics for 9.3 million enrolled veterans on a $114.8 billion FY2026 budget -- about $12,340 per enrollee, funded by 387,086 employees who are 89 percent of VA's entire workforce.
What is this organization?
What does it do?
VHA runs 170 VA Medical Centers and 1,193 outpatient clinics across 1,380 facilities⧉. In its own FY2026 accounting, 9,302,164 veterans were enrolled for care⧉, of whom 7,887,814 were treated as unique patients⧉ -- 1,332,183 admitted as inpatients, the rest handled across 161.5 million outpatient visits⧉ that year. VHA is also the country's largest provider of graduate medical education, training the next generation of civilian doctors inside the same hospitals treating veterans.
What does it cost to run — money and people?
Congress enacted $114.8 billion in discretionary Medical Care appropriations for FY2026⧉, funding 387,086 full-time employees⧉ -- about 89 percent of 's entire 437,144-person workforce. Against 9,302,164 enrolled veterans⧉, that appropriation works out to roughly $12,340 per enrollee for a year of health care. FY2025 enacted funding was $112.95 billion on 399,293 ; VHA's own FY2027 request asks for $123.4 billion, on 392,768 .
View data as table
| Medical Services | 57,241 | direct VA-facility care |
|---|---|---|
| Medical Community Care | 34,000 | care VHA buys from private providers |
| Medical Support & Compliance | 11,669 | |
| Medical Facilities | 11,876 | operating and maintaining VA hospitals/clinics |
Why is it good for society?
VHA's scale lets it change clinical practice system-wide in ways a fragmented private market can't. Before its Opioid Safety Initiative launched in 2013⧉, prescribed opioids to 874,897 veterans in 2012⧉; by 2023 that had fallen 67 percent, to 288,820⧉, with veterans on the highest-overdose-risk combination -- opioids plus benzodiazepines -- down 90 percent, from 162,444 to 15,981. A single national system with its own prescribing guidelines, pharmacy formulary, and pain-management teams could enforce that shift across every facility at once; primary-care practices scattered across the private market largely could not.
- VHA's FY2026 enacted $114.8 billion Medical Care budget works out to about $12,340 per enrolled veteran -- funded by 387,086 employees, roughly 89 percent of 's entire 437,144-person workforce.
- The budget is growing (FY2025's $112.95B enacted to FY2027's $123.4B requested) while staffing has moved less: 399,293 in FY2025, 387,086 enacted for FY2026, 392,768 requested for FY2027.
Your handles.* Apply for health care or check your enrollment status through VA.gov's health care application. Bring a concern about the care you received to your local facility's Patient Advocate, listed on VA's facility locator. See VHA's own budget request, in the same tables cited here, in the FY2027 Congressional Budget Submission⧉.
Sources(5) ▾
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs FY 2027 Budget Submission: Budget in Brief (2026-04-01) — 's own FY2027 congressional budget submission, filed with appropriators in April 2026. Because it compares 2027's request against 2026 as the 'Enacted with Transfers' column, it is the source for this entry's FY2026 enacted figures for VHA -- the Medical Care discretionary appropriation, VHA-wide , unique enrollees, unique patients, inpatient treated, and outpatient visits -- alongside the FY2025 enacted and FY2027 request comparison figures and the chart's object-class budget breakdown. department.va.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA History — Object 41: Creating the Department of Veterans Affairs (2026-01-01) — 's own official history page naming the statute (Public Law 100-527) and the signing/effective dates that elevated the Veterans Administration to Cabinet status as the Department of Veterans Affairs. Wayback save requests for this page returned no response and the availability API shows no existing snapshot (same known limitation this newsroom has repeatedly hit on department.va.gov pages during periods of high concurrent capture demand); the URL above is the direct, one-click original-document link on 's own domain. department.va.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VA History Summary (2026-01-01) — 's own institutional history page, the source for the 1946 creation of the Department of Medicine and Surgery (Public Law 79-293) and the 1991 redesignation of that unit as the Veterans Health Administration. department.va.gov · original document
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Veterans Health Administration — About Us (2026-06-01) — VHA's own current organizational overview -- the source for its mission statement and facility footprint (170 Medical Centers, 1,193 outpatient clinics, 1,380 facilities total) used in the 'what does it do' section. Wayback save requests for this page returned no response and the availability API shows no existing snapshot; the URL above is the direct, one-click original-document link on 's own domain. department.va.gov · original document
- VA News (U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs), VA reduces Veterans prescribed opioids by 67% since 2012 (2023-09-21) — 's own official press release reporting its Opioid Safety Initiative results, drawn from 's internal prescribing data -- the source for the 2012-vs-2023 opioid-prescribing counterfactual used in 'why is it good for society.' news.va.gov · original document
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The Veterans Health Administration is the health-care arm of the Department of Veterans Affairs, created when the Department of Veterans Affairs Act of 1988 (Public Law 100-527)⧉ elevated the former Veterans Administration to Cabinet status, effective March 15, 1989. Its medical mission runs further back, to the Department of Medicine and Surgery, created within VA by statute in 1946⧉; that unit took its current name, Veterans Health Administration, in 1991. VHA sits inside under an Under Secretary for Health and describes itself as the nation's largest integrated health-care network⧉.