OPINION: What's happen at the VA is bad for everyone, not just veterans

Nicholas R. Aranda's op-ed (Dec. 15 Journal) recounts a wide range of opinions he has heard from veterans about the Veterans Affairs Medical Center here in Albuquerque. Like him, I have used the Albuquerque VA medical center and others across the country for over 30 years.

I also have had high respect for the professional providers who have saved my life several times with surgeries and interventions, at no cost. But this exceptional health care system is getting sloppy which is why many veterans are grumpy and frustrated as we have both noticed.

I started asking questions too, but most of the VA staff are afraid to speak out. Many feel overworked due to the large number of positions which have been cut with job buyouts, retirements and vacant positions left vacant, supposedly, in order to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse.

The VA once provided world-class health care for veterans as first priority, regardless of cost. This involved supporting a lot of unnoticed things like research and teaching programs. The VA also functioned as a backup to the country’s private delivery system in the recent COVID-19 pandemic.

President Trump’s Department of Veterans Affairs FY2026 budget submission to Congress is for $441.2 billion. That is a lot of money, one of the largest parts of overall government spending.

But what I have learned is that over the past decade with the stated intention of improving the quality of care for veterans a program called Community Care has emerged inside the VA. This program encourages veterans to not use the VA but to go to for-profit providers outside the VA. The result is that our care is getting worse as the VA’s holistic, integrated system is being chopped up. Many vets feel that the CC program is draining the VA budget to bail out the nation’s failing private health care system.

This can be seen in the president’s budget submission to Congress on page BiB-4. Yes, the total amount is greater than last year due to all the new wars and veterans being created but the amount requested for care at the VA is reduced by 17.4% while the amount for outside providers is increased by 50.7%.

In addition, this budget request assumes a reduction of FTE permanent workers by almost 3,000 positions on top of the DOGE cuts. This all started when President Reagan said, "Government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem."

As a result, veterans have become a miner’s canary. The recent federal budget shutdown battle highlighted health care for our whole country as a major need. Unfortunately, that debate became framed as one of affordability when we have in front of us the once-great VA as a model solution.

If the VA is privatized as many fear, the VA facilities will be sold off as dysfunctional and the VA will become just a grant provider to select vets who will then have to individually find in the marketplace of for-profit doctors for solutions to complex medical needs.

What is happening at the VA is a plan for bad health care for everyone, not just vets.

Bob Anderson is a Vietnam War veteran, Ph.D., retired political science professor at Central New Mexico Community College and taught honors and other courses at the University of New Mexico.