Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki acknowledged Wednesday that they have been frustrated by departmental bureaucracy in their attempts to streamline military health care for severely wounded service members.

At a rare joint appearance before the House Armed Services and House Veterans Affairs committees, the secretaries pointed to what they called unprecedented cooperation between their two departments in battling some of their most pressing problems, including the high rate of military suicide and the huge backlog of disability claims.

But they have been unable to consolidate separate VA and DoD programs to coordinate the long-term recovery of seriously wounded service members, despite warnings from the Government Accountability Office that the proliferation of programs may increase red tape.