The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) plans to eliminate as many as 35,000 health care positions in December according to a leaked internal memo. The memo was sent in November from the top leadership of the VA to regional managers and details are now beginning to surface. The memo instructs these regional managers to identify thousands of openings that could be canceled. The VA already lost almost 30,000 employees this year from buyout offers and attrition. Earlier this year VA Secretary Douglas A. Collins planned mass firings, but a bipartisan mix of lawmakers restrained Collins, due to concerns that cuts would affect patient care. The VA is the nation’s largest government-run healthcare system. Critics say that the system is already overstretched, and these new cuts will only make patients wait longer for care.
Secretary Collins has repeatedly insisted that he would not touch medical professionals. However, according to an Aug. 12 report from the Office of the Inspector General, since the beginning of this fiscal year, the VA has lost 2,000 registered nurses, approximately 1,300 medical assistants, 1,100 nursing assistants and licensed practical nurses, 800 doctors, 500 social workers, and 150 psychologists. The report states that 94% of VA facilities faced a “severe” shortage of doctors, while 79% faced a “severe” shortage of nurses. The agency wrote that without these core healthcare workers, “mission-critical work cannot be completed.” Healthcare workers have said that these shortages have created unsafe conditions for the patients, while nurses are forced to treat conditions for which they have never been trained, be responsible for more patients, and work more overtime.
Advocates for veterans have said that such impossible conditions are not an accident, but part of a plan to transform the VA system into a private voucher program. Several independent studies, including the Congressional Budget Office, show that the private voucher programs are more expensive, have longer wait times for service, and are poorly coordinated with the needs of the patient.
In September, 170 physicians, researchers, psychologists and other healthcare workers signed an open letter warning of the consequences from the drastic budget cuts, the reduction of “core” medical staff, and outsourcing at the Department of Veteran Affairs. The open letter is titled the “Lincoln Declaration,” based on the March 4, 1865 Second Inaugural Address by Abraham Lincoln that committed the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan,” which became the foundation for the VA’s mission.