Make a thing shitty and then claim it needs to be privatized to make it better (it'll stay shitty) is a republican tradition as old as time.

As I recall, the Project 2025 goal is to reduce VA health services to primary care only and outsource everything else to the community. my guess is that eventually it will be vouchers and we all know how well those keep up with inflation.

In less than 8 months, 2 different people committed suicide in the parking lot of the San Antonio VA hospital. I fear this is going to continue as these facilities are further short-staffed and they remove remote positions that could reach more patients.

This administration really hates veterans

I jumped ship after 9 years last July, 2024. Got the last set of residents launched and peaced the fuck out after the writing was already on the wall.

I used to rep hard for the VA. I got my loans paid off and had an amazing and highly awarded clinical, teaching, research, and leadership career. Led an inpatient unit through COVID with zero on-unit transmissions (in a hospital teeming with outbreaks).

They strangled the life out of our service with understaffing and eventually changed my RVU expectations without telling me, impacting the main salary boost (and a modest one at that!) I could earn giving back to our service members.

I do 32 hours a week at a lovely insurance-based clinic now and supplement with my own micro, cash pay only, private practice. The first job pays 20% more than the VA on salary alone. Obviously I worked way more than 32 hrs/week at the VA. Bonus is then revenue based without cap. For my rates on private practice, they are set at concierge care levels to compensate for the hassle. I was never in this for the money, but it's nice, and I'm not stressed about work. My family and I are tighter than ever.

I still miss working with the veterans and my colleagues. When I left they were up to 5 or 6 people patched together to cover the responsibilities I had. Nonetheless, my calculated final full quarter's RVU production somehow dropped from consistently >125% to 76%.

This is why we can't even have shitty things at the VA, forget adequate or nice care. They destroy anything that works for something more costly, lower quality, and less efficient, ensuring the need for further "fixes" that escalate the problem.

All signs point to privatization. The profit incentive (on our bloated military budget) is too fucking irresistible.

Veterans think they’re going to love private medical care but at least in my experience it’s a huge culture shock going from VA as a patient to the private sector. VA primary care cannot fire a patient. Stalking, threats of violence, not to mention verbal abuse, does not matter.

I have had 2 patients in the past 3 months demand I fill out SSI disability forms for them when they were clearly committing disability fraud. response from admin was “why are these patients complaining about you, please call and work something out.” Private practice docs will just fire this kind of patient. Every VA is different but these are some of the most entitled patients I have ever encountered and the attitude is not going to survive in the real world where you’re just another 15 min visit

And the vets will still mainline their Fox News in the lobbies and gargle Trump's scrotum at the voting booth while wondering why their PCP quit or can't see them again for a year and a half.

Just had to sit down with other service leadership and rank all our currently vacant positions (which are all actively in recruitment) so that facility leadership can then go through and prioritize which 100-150 our entire med center is allowed to keep (out of 600-700 current vacancies). The rest get abolished. We are hoping the clinical jobs will be prioritized highest, but who knows.

Oh also, OP, remote/telework is not a thing in the VA anymore (or the federal government in general) thanks to some executive orders from earlier in the year. Everyone was forced to “return to office” back in the spring, even if they were hired into a remote position and had no office to return to.

Here's my cynical view: Lack of Healthcare Workers = Fewer veterans get access to Healthcare. Over 2-5 years, a good number of vets will simply not get HC. No HCWs, no (or poor) HC. Basically they're saying "Let the veterans die." That works for the Government because fewer vets means less spending. They're saving money by letting people die. No HC, no pension, no food aid... Pure profit.

Nothing quite like the Republicans keeping their word about taking care of the American Heroes they gush about so much. /s

There's a large nursing shortage and this is just going to make things worse at the VA.

The VA has its issues (namely the kind of nurses and staff it often attracts) but overall I think it does a pretty decent job for veterans and has a lot of really great programs.

Can’t wait to watch them make it even worse.

terrible news, departments such as SW were depleted by as much as 25% of their workforce with the DOGE purge, and due to the hiring freeze those positions have stayed unfilled, only now to be eliminated. I fear there will be ongoing waves of departures as workers reach their limit with the lack of staffing.

I'm a vet, the quality of care has dropped notably this year for me. And I live near Madison, WI, where the VA is affiliated with UW Madison and has many specialty services, so this isn't some tiny CBOC outpatient clinic with one NP, 2 MAs, and a receptionist. But at least they don't have the staff wearing a rainbow lanyard any more...