Category Archives: Veterans Administration

Fact Sheet Veterans’ Healthcare & VA Staffing

No Cuts to Veterans’ Healthcare and VA Staffing

Currently 25-30% of VA employees are veterans. To date, 2,400 VA employees have already been fired. In total, 6,000 veterans have been let go from federal employment.

To date there are 18 million living veterans, comprising 6.1% of the population. Nine million veterans received care visits at the VA in 2023. The VA System is the largest integrated healthcare network in the country. More than six million veterans have service-related disabilities.

Cuts to VA healthcare services for veterans have already occurred despite assurances to the contrary by the Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins.

The recent freeze on hiring and “return-to office” mandate adversely impacted the Veterans’ Crisis Line (SUICIDE HOTLINE) and eliminated the mental health tele-visit program. The Veterans’ Crisis Line takes 60,000 calls per month. There are 17.6 suicides by veterans per day, and this rate is increasing. Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for veterans under 45 years of age.

The VA was a leader in tele-health care until these services were completely eliminated for veterans who live distant from a VA medical center. This directly impacts veterans living in rural areas.

Projected cuts will also affect management of medical supplies, appointments and transportation.

In 2025, the Secretary of Veterans Affairs attempted to cancel 875 contracts. These contracts included mission-critical items such as sterilizing equipment and maintenance of generators, boilers and scanning machines. These cuts were later “walked back” because the services were critical to the VA medical centers.

The Office of the Inspector General completed its annual audit of the VA in 2024. The August 2024 Report revealed a severe shortage of employees in 98% of VA medical centers. This means 137 of 139 VA medical centers nationwide had staffing shortages in at least one area, particularly doctors, nurses, psychologists and custodians.

This audit identified approximately 66,000 job vacancies at the VA in healthcare. The staff shortages cause long wait times for visits and an inability to accept new patients.
The VA is also losing funds for research. VA research addresses issues including substance abuse, mental health, cancer (lung cancer, head and neck tumors), cardiovascular disease and war-related injuries such as spinal cord and brain trauma.

The PACT Act (Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxins Act) in 2022 extended healthcare benefits for veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.

The VA enrolled 400,000 veterans for benefits from 3/23 to 4/24, a 30% increase over the prior year.

The Secretary of Veterans Affairs currently plans to cut an additional 15-17% of the VA workforce. This represents 80,000 to 83,000 current employees. Secretary Collins said the job cuts are “…to save money.”

Author: Michael Siebers, retired MD

William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans’ Hospital, 27 years’ service

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US Senators Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson
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~ NO CUTS to Veterans’ Healthcare ~

Join the Save Our VA Project

National Projects of Veterans for Peace

“VFP’s Save Our VA (SOVA) National Campaign seeks justice for veterans and advocates for strengthening the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for all veterans. The SOVA National Campaign consists of more than a thousand individual veteran and non-veteran supporters contacting their Members of Congress on VA health care issues. SOVA works in collaboration with our allies in the VA unions: the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), National Nurses United (NNU), and National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE). “

Stop the Destruction of Our VA Medical System – Please Sign/Share

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As of 2022…

Over one-third of all veterans’ medical visits have already been sent outside of the VA system
And more than 25% of VA healthcare dollars have already been diverted to the private, for-profit sector as a result of the VA MISSION Act.
One-third of the union jobs at the VA that the AIR commission would destroy are held by veterans themselves.

This fiasco must be stopped.

Petition to #SaveMyVA from AIR Commission Closures – Action Network

Thank you very much for reading these articles, signing the petition and sharing this information to your veteran and non-veterans friends and asking them to help you by signing on.

Peace

Buzz Davis, Vets for Peace in Tucson

More information:

Veterans for Peace – Save Our VA Campaign

These 17 Medical Centers Would Close and More Than 30 Built or Replaced Under VA Plan | Military.com

“The Department of Veterans Affairs has unveiled a plan that calls for closing 17 aging or underused medical centers, while shifting services to more than 30 new or rebuilt hospitals. In some cases, it would rely on private care.

Under the nearly $2 trillion proposal released Monday, the department would lose a net of three medical centers and 174 outpatient health clinics but would gain 255 health care facilities, including new clinics, stand-alone rehabilitation centers and nursing homes.

Medical centers in areas with diminishing veteran populations are among those slated to close, while others would be built in growing urban centers, the West and the South — areas where veteran populations are growing…”

Blog | VHPI (veteranspolicy.org)

“The Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute is a national nonprofit, nonpartisan research and policy organization that studies the provision of healthcare and other services to the those who served in the US military as well as their families and communities.”

The VA Needs More Funding, Not More Privatization (jacobinmag.com)

“Joe Biden touted himself as friend of veterans while on the campaign trail. But now he’s overseeing the continued privatization of the VA and backing nominees that brag about being venture capitalists.”

Biden’s VA Secretary Proposes Shutting Down Dozens of Facilities

It’s both bad politics and bad policy.

BY SUZANNE GORDON MARCH 21, 2022. Prospect

“On March 14th, the Department of Veterans Affairs VA) released some deeply flawed proposals for reorganizing the nation’s largest and only publicly funded, fully integrated health care system.

Rather than building back better at the VA-run Veterans Health Administration (VHA), VA Secretary Denis McDonough’s blueprint embraces, rather than rejects, further outsourcing of care for more than nine million veterans, and proposes VHA downsizing that will dramatically accelerate that trend.

It’s not often that national unions representing around 250,000 VHA workers and right-wing Republicans like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis issue simultaneous denunciations of privatization. But that’s what happened in the wake of McDonough’s facility-closing recommendations to the VA Asset and Infrastructure Review (AIR) Commission, a panel just nominated by President Biden.

Adding to the political confusion was the outraged response of Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), who co-sponsored the VA MISSION Act of 2018, which created the AIR Commission. During Joe Biden’s first year in office, the MISSION Act also helped divert $18 billion from the VHA’s direct-care budget to the private health care industry, whose providers now consume 20 percent of the VHA’s budget..”

Madison VFP Members Testify at VA Privatization Session

VFP members Larry Orr, Lincoln Grahlfs, and Will Williams listen to Suzanne Gordon present at the Madison VA.

Madison VFP Members Testify at VA Privatization Session

By Paul McMahon

Several experienced and VA-knowledgeable VFP members participated in a public information meeting on February 28, 2018 at the Madison Labor Temple about the future of VA medical care. The session focused on an issue that is critical to the future care of veterans in this country—namely the growing efforts to privatize the VA for corporate profit. There is a debate raging in Washington DC about how veterans should receive their health care. While there have always been attempts to privatize parts of veteran care, there have been renewed efforts after employees at the Phoenix VA blew the whistle on management fabricating patient wait lists and putting veterans at risk. Private industry and a Koch brothers-funded organization called the Concerned Veterans of America saw their opportunity and began an all-out assault campaign to take down the VA and farm it out to the private sector. The movement has been gaining support from both sides of the aisle in Washington under the guise of “helping our needy veterans” and “thanking them for their service.”

Perspective at the meeting was presented by Suzanne Gordon. Gordon is an American journalist and author who writes about healthcare delivery and health care systems and patient safety and nursing. She is author, co-author or editor of 18 books. She is currently working on a book about the innovations and clinical care at the Veterans Health Administration.

VFP members Lincoln Grahlfs, Larry Orr and Will Williams all spoke and testified about their excellent treatment at VA facilities. Ms. Gordon urged all present to contact Senators Baldwin, Johnson and their representative (Mark Pocan) to counter the privatization moves. Thanks to all who participated and helped us be better informed. Thank you especially to the American Federation of Government Employes for sponsoring this session and for some of this edited text.

More photos from the event can be found here.

Madison Veterans Hospital to hold town hall meeting Sept. 23

Originally posted on Madison.com.

Madison’s Veterans Hospital will hold a town hall meeting at 6 p.m. Sept. 23 for veterans, families, staff and the media.

“This will be a great opportunity for veterans to hear directly from hospital leaders about issues that concern or affect them,” according to an announcement this week on the hospital’s Facebook page.

An audit in June found new patients waited an average of 51 days to see a primary care doctor at the Madison VA. They waited an average of 24 days in Milwaukee and 17 in Tomah.

The VA has a 14-day target for wait times. Veterans in other states have died while waiting for care , leading to nationwide review.

The Madison VA hospital had a “significant increase in patient demand” and vacancies in primary care provider positions, resulting in the long wait for new patients, spokesman Tim Donovan said. The providers have been replaced or are being replaced, Donovan said.

In the 2013 fiscal year, patients made 1,404 complaints to the hospital’s patient advocate office, he said. Of those, 261 were concerns about the timeliness of access to care and 302 were about other aspects of patient care, he said.

More than 40,000 veterans were cared for in fiscal 2013 at the hospital and its clinics in Baraboo, Beaver Dam, Janesville, Madison and Freeport and Rockford, Illinois. They accounted for nearly 400,000 outpatient visits.