Veterans Care Under Attack

May 26, 2025

VA Secretary Collins: Indifferent to Public’s and Congressional Opposition to His Gutting Veterans’ Care
The American Prospect
May 23, 2025
By Suzanne Gordon & Russell Lemle

When Doug Collins first appeared before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (SVAC) for his confirmation hearing, his comforting bromides about his commitment to the VA and veterans lulled Democratic members, who, with only a few exceptions, voted to confirm Collins as President Trump’s new secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. As one Capitol Hill insider told the Prospect, many believed that, unlike Pete Hegseth or RFK Jr., Collins was “a man they could work with.” …

Fast-forward four and a half months to May 6th, when Collins appeared for the second time in front of the Senate Committee, and May 15th, when he made his first appearance before the HVAC. Assessing his first months on the job, Democrats now clearly viewed Collins as someone working not with, but against, them—and against the nation’s veterans. They expressed anger at his firing of 1,000 probationary employees, his cancelation of hundreds of contracts with vendors that supply VA with critical resources, and his termination of VA researchers, thus interrupting clinical trials that could benefit veterans. And, of course, there was Collins’s vow to lay off 83,000 VA employees. …

As one VA observer who chose to remain anonymous observed, “Some VISN staff reductions could occur without loss of functional capability if such were done in a systematic and thoughtful manner. In doing so, however, it would be important to work with the Congress on what programmatic, reporting, and other requirements they are going to insist upon going forward.”

As for all those supposed underperforming doctors and nurses Collins wants to reassign or fire, some are chiefs of medicine, chiefs of staff, chiefs of nursing, or nurse managers who provide the kind of clinical leadership without which no hospital or health system can function. These administrative positions also require the very clinical background that Collins seems to dismiss. …

At the end of the House hearing, ranking member Takano displayed a spreadsheet in which Collins’s team had calculated the cost savings that would result from a 15 percent reduction in every VA classification. The spreadsheet, Takano said, estimated that cutting 4,000 nurses would save $1 billion, while cutting 400 psychologists would save $110 million. Why, Takano asked the secretary, had Collins requested that his team conduct this kind of analysis given that he’d promised not to cut direct-care staff?

Instead of responding to the question, Collins began yelling at the ranking member …

On the afternoon after the Senate hearing, a group of 60 members of Common Defense, a progressive veterans’ organization that has launched a nationwide campaign called “VA: Not For Sale,” joined nurses and congressmembers on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to protest Collins’s plans. Common Defense’s executive director, Army veteran Jose Vasquez … told the Prospect that Common Defense is adamantly opposed to arbitrary mass layoffs at the VA. “VA shouldn’t be firing 8, or 80, or 8,000, much less 83,000 employees. The VA needs to hire, not fire.” More importantly, Vasquez added, “instead of attacking VA doctors and nurses who contribute to our care in all kinds of ways, VA leaders should be supporting the dedicated caregivers who themselves sacrifice to support veterans like me.”

Call To Action May 31, 2025: Demand Health Not Profit!
Search “Action Sites” on the webpage for a US map – will update all week as new sites are added!

We call on communities across the country to join in a National Day of Action on Saturday, May 31, 2025, to put National Single Payer Healthcare on the nation’s agenda.

Our health care system is broken beyond repair. Insurance companies and for-profit middlemen create barriers to care and massive administrative waste. These result in unnecessary suffering and deaths. For over 60 years, piecemeal reforms have resulted in higher costs and the worst health outcomes among comparable nations.

We demand the recognition by our government that health care is a human right.

We demand the elimination of private health insurance and the banning of for-profit delivery of care.

We demand the enactment of a publicly financed, national single payer program that would provide comprehensive coverage to everyone.

We demand that health care delivery be transformed from profit-seeking ventures into services organized to serve the people of our country, a system in which all caregivers are freed from corporate control.

The National Day of Action will bring people together locally and nationally from neighborhoods, unions, faith groups, businesses, and all types of civic organizations to join the demand to remove profit from health care. We must focus our collective anger towards corporate health insurers to bring real reform: put National Single Payer on the nation’s agenda!

 

Comment by: Jim Kahn

On Memorial Day, of course our attention turns to the health care of military veterans. Only to find, sadly, that this group – which voted 65% for Trump – is being mistreated by his administration. Unlike other nominees requiring Senate confirmation, Doug Collins seemed competent and committed to the VA role, to the welfare of veterans. But, as it turns out, he’s committed most of all to cutting budgets, regardless of consequences. And when questioned on this anti-veteran approach, he bristles. Thus we find that even this highly valued group of Americans suffers from being a lower priority than the billionaires whose tax cuts are the payment due for supporting the current president’s campaign.

Single payer – with everyone served by the same public system – is the way to assure adequate funding. Indeed, it is the path to combining efficiency with generosity, by eliminating administrative complexity and intermediary (insurer) profit-taking.

An exciting national day of action for single payer is just 5 days away! Join the event nearest you. Raise our voices — demand health care justice. Louder and louder every day!