What happened to the golden rule for our veterans? What happened to "You serve and defend your country, and your country will serve and care for you"?

These days, hundreds of thousands of men and women ending long years of honorable service or coming home from foreign wars are finding themselves stuck in an overwhelmed and indifferent medical system. And, in some ways, they are the lucky ones.

Outrages like those discovered at Walter Reed Army Medical Center earlier this year are just one facet of our government's systemic failure to hold up its end of the bargain: Almost 2 million honorably discharged veterans are now living without health-care coverage, and almost 300 Iraq war veterans have committed suicide in the aftermath of their often difficult homecomings.

This shouldn't happen to American service members -- especially when the capacity to help is so close at hand.

By creating relationships between veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the federally qualified health centers funded by the department of Health and Human Services, our ability to care for our veterans from Iraq, Afghanistan or any era could be expanded dramatically -- almost overnight.

As things stand, all veterans are not equal in the complicated caste system of care. Access for active service members depends on how close they are to discharge or release and whether they need treatment for a service-connected problem that renders them at least 50 percent disabled. Other veterans must apply to get into the system and then wait to see if they are accepted and where their care stands on the system's list of priorities.

Even those veterans who get enrolled in the system face great obstacles. Returning Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, particularly those seeking treatment for stress or mental disorders, can have an especially hard time.

Veterans of earlier wars and eras are suffering, too. They find themselves on waiting lists instead of receiving the attention they need. Their families are left in limbo while bureaucrats decide if they are eligible for compensation. Elderly veterans can't get help because they lack cars or are too infirm to drive for hours to get to regional veterans centers.

While Pittsburgh has veterans hospitals with staff who work hard to care for every patient, imagine if they were integrated with the more than 100 federally qualified health centers operating in Western Pennsylvania. This could ensure that no veteran ever had to wait in long lines or travel beyond his or her community for medical care.

Federally qualified health centers, which can receive federal grants to provide care in underserved areas, serve 16 million people at 5,000 locations with the technology and medical expertise to meet veterans' needs. They already are operating in underserved regions most in need of veterans' facilities and, in several places, they've already expanded their reach.

In West Virginia, Montana and Chicago, the Heinz Foundation, in partnership with PhRMA (the trade association representing pharmaceutical manufacturers), is working with health centers to subsidize services for uninsured children in families that earn too much to qualify for the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Federal law gives the Department of Veterans Affairs broad authority to secure health care for veterans by entering into agreements with other health-care providers, including federally qualified health centers. Thirteen already function as outpatient centers for veterans. Simply by agreeing to reimburse the health centers for providing veterans care on a per-patient basis -- much as Medicaid and Medicare reimburse doctors and clinics for their services -- the Department of Veterans Affairs instantaneously could expand its network of outpatient services with little red tape and modest investments. The working partnership between the department and the state of Virginia could serve as a model.

Even as Washington debates when and how to bring our service members back from Iraq, there should be no debate that every veteran deserves timely, accessible, high-quality health care when he or she comes home.

America's service members have answered their country's call. Congress and their commander-in-chief should answer the veterans' call in the same noble spirit.