Carnage At The VA -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/05/11/carnage-at-the-va/

Pro Publica reports:

Earlier this year, doctors at Veterans Affairs hospitals in Pennsylvania sounded an alarm. Sweeping cuts imposed by the Trump administration, they told higher-ups in an email, were causing “severe and immediate impacts,” including to “life-saving cancer trials.”

The email said more than 1,000 veterans would lose access to treatment for diseases ranging from metastatic head and neck cancers, to kidney disease, to traumatic brain injuries.

“Enrollment in clinical trials is stopping,” the email warned, “meaning veterans lose access to therapies.”

The administration reversed some of its decisions, allowing some trials to continue for now. Still, other research, including the trials for treating head and neck cancer, has been stalled.

President Donald Trump has long promised to prioritize veterans.

“We love our veterans,” he said in February. “We are going to take good care of them.”

After the Department of Veterans Affairs began shedding employees and contracts, Trump’s pick to run the agency, Secretary Doug Collins, pledged, “Veterans are going to notice a change for the better.”

But dozens of internal emails obtained by ProPublica reveal a far different reality. Doctors and others at VA hospitals and clinics across the country have been sending often desperate messages to headquarters detailing how cuts will harm veterans’ care. The VA provides health care to roughly 9 million veterans.

Why would they do this, you wonder? Even Republicans used to hold the VA pretty sacred. Well, according to Rolling Stone:

Over 1,000 veterans lost access to life-saving cancer trials. Research on suicide prevention and toxic exposure was paused or canceled. A critical cancer registry — which myself and so many other veterans worked on — was marked for immediate termination. It’s all part of a ploy enabling Trump to sell the VA to the highest private bidder: ensure veterans receive substandard, non-specialized care to the point that a private health care system infamous for putting up roadblocks to obtaining care can take over, maximizing profits for Trump’s donors while leaving veterans to suffer and die.

I think that’s right. These cuts are going to benefit someone and it isn’t the veterans or the taxpayers.

Oh, but Trump is planning to spend tens of millions on a military parade on his birthday so that’s nice. But no disabled vets will be allowed. He doesn’t like to see that.