Unfortunately, the latest report out of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is anything but good.

In fact, it’s disturbing.

According to The New York Times and various department officials, the number of veterans on waiting lists is at least 50 percent higher than last year — a realization that’s stunning when weighed against the backlash that was felt when those initial problems were announced almost 12 months ago. In addition, the department is facing a “budget shortfall” of more than $3 billion.

How will it be remedied? No plan is set in stone as of yet, but officials are tossing out a whole number of solutions that could very well include furloughs, hiring freezes and even — get this — “excluding certain patients who have advanced terminal diseases or suffer from a ‘persistent vegetative state or advanced dementia’.”

More from The Grey Lady:

Agency officials expect to petition Congress this week to allow them to shift money into programs running short of cash. But that may place them at odds with Republican lawmakers who object to removing funds from a new program intended to allow certain veterans on waiting lists and in rural areas to choose taxpayer-paid care from private doctors outside the department’s health system.

“Something has to give,” the department’s deputy secretary, Sloan D. Gibson, said in an interview. “We can’t leave this as the status quo. We are not meeting the needs of veterans, and veterans are signaling that to us by coming in for additional care, and we can’t deliver it as timely as we want to.”

Since the waiting-list scandal broke last year, the department has broadly expanded access to care. Its doctors and nurses have handled 2.7 million more appointments than in any previous year, while authorizing 900,000 additional patients to see outside physicians. In all, agency officials say, they have increased capacity by more than seven million patient visits per year — double what they originally thought they needed to fix shortcomings.