How the administration is dismantling and privatizing the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Peter Montague for Common Dreams
In 1865, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln called for the nation “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan." Today the motto of the VA reads, “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise to care for those who have served in our nation’s military and for their families, caregivers, and survivors.”
The VA provides over 18 million veterans and their dependents
and caregivers with a multitude of services—healthcare, a Veterans Crisis Line for
urgent assistance, disability payments and rehab, education assistance, career
counseling, support for veteran-owned businesses, home loans, life insurance
and financial services, help for caregivers to the disabled, burial in national
cemeteries, and more.
And, of course, the nation has promised those same VA benefits to the 2 million men and women currently serving in the armed forces (1.3 million on active duty and another 761,000 in the reserves) after they retire from service.
The plan to privatize the VA was hatched during the first Trump
administration. By 2024 a real plan was ready. Project 2025—the MAGA [“Make
America Great Again”] blueprint for the authoritarian takeover of the United States—strongly
favored private healthcare for veterans.
The VA’s own healthcare system includes 170 hospitals
and nearly 1,200 clinics spread across the country. It is the nation’s largest
integrated healthcare system. Since 2014, the VA has also had a private side, now known as
“community care.” If a veteran lives too far from a VA healthcare facility or
needs a service the VA can’t provide, they may be eligible for “community care”
from a private local doctor or clinic, paid for by the VA.
The Trump administration is expanding privatized “community
care.” The “VA Mission Act of
2018,” enacted during the first Trump administration, nearly doubled the
VA’s budget for private “community care” from $15 billion in 2018 to $28.3
billion in 2023.
Trump’s 2025 VA budget proposal increases total VA spending, but 75%
of the increase (or $14.4 billion) doesn’t go to the VA at all—it goes to
private medical providers. This represents a 67% increase for privatized care.
Many see the growing private healthcare budget as a stealth
way to eventually privatize the VA’s entire system. Every dollar devoted to
private care is a dollar denied to the VA’s own doctors and nurses, ultimately undermining the
entire VA system. Doctors and nurses see the handwriting on the wall and leave.
Their likely replacements see an agency under siege and stay away.
So far in 2025, the VA lost 600 doctors and 1,900 nurses. During the first
three months of the year, about 40% of doctors who were offered jobs declined—four times the
rejection rate a year earlier.
DISCLOSURE: Peter is a valued old friend. We collaborated often when I was organizing director at the organization now known as the Center for Health and Environmental Justice especially on issues that involving fighting corporate crime. - Will Collette
In March 2025, a leaked memo revealed Trump’s plan to eliminate 83,000 jobs from the VA, as much as 15% of the agency’s workforce. In response, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) called the plan “a gut punch… breathtaking… in its malevolence and cruelty.” After major pushback from veterans, the agency announced it would only need to cut 30,000 jobs because so many staff had agreed to leave voluntarily.
To make it easier to cut VA staff, on August 6 VA Secretary
Doug Collins ended
collective bargaining agreements for most of the VA’s 377,000
unionized employees, including nurses, doctors, benefits processors, food
service workers, technicians, and janitorial staff. The VA is the first major
federal agency to fully strip collective bargaining rights from its unionized
workforce.
Since 1865, veterans have been given preference for government jobs,
though they must prove they are qualified to do the work. More than one-quarter
of the VA’s 482,000 employees are veterans. (Project 2025’s plan to eliminate half
of all government employees by 2026 and 75% by 2029 would cut jobs for about
300,000 veterans.)
In August 2025, the VA’s inspector general reported 4,434 health
staffing shortages—a 50% increase from the previous year. In all, 94% of 139 VA
health facilities reported severe shortages of medical officers and 79%
reported shortages of nurses. As private-care funding is increasing, the VA
itself is fraying.
In recent years, a mental health crisis among veterans has been growing worse and the Trump administration has responded by slashing the services designed to save lives. On average, 17 veterans commit suicide every day. Since 2007, the Veterans Crisis Line has handled more than 1.6 million calls and dispatched 351,000 emergency responders (about 100 per day) to help veterans in crisis, yet Trump and VA Secretary Collins have targeted suicide prevention programs for cuts.
Furthermore, a study published in
the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2025
revealed that veterans
receiving private “community care” are not satisfied with the quality
of care they receive outside the VA and they have a 21% higher
suicide rate.
Now the ”One Big Beautiful Bill Act” that Congress enacted
July 4 is expected to eliminate
Medicaid health insurance for some veterans. Medicaid currently
provides care for 1.6 million veterans, including those with the most complex medical
needs.
In addition, when veterans transition out of the military it
often takes six months or longer to find steady work. During that time, they
may rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly “food
stamps”) to feed their families. The One Big Beautiful Bill denies SNAP benefits to
able-bodied people who don’t have jobs, specifically including veterans. Trump says he “loves our
veterans” and will take care of them—but the Big Beautiful Bill is how he
thanks them for their service.
It gets worse. In 2022, Congress enacted the PACT Act to
deliver healthcare to millions of veterans who were exposed to toxic chemicals
during their years of service. Now Trump is undermining that law.
During the Vietnam War (1962-1971), about 3 million veterans
were exposed to Agent Orange, a potent cancer-causing herbicide sprayed over vast areas to
kill jungle vegetation. An estimated 300,000 Vietnam veterans have
already died from
exposure to Agent Orange (about five times as many as the 58,000
killed in combat).
Another major source of toxic exposures to veterans has been
smoke and fumes from “burn pits.”
Burn pits are big holes in the ground where, for decades, roughly 300 military
installations (large and small, worldwide) have burned plastics, electronics,
chemicals, munitions, medical waste, and human waste. Somewhere between 3.5 and
5 million veterans have been exposed to toxic fumes from burn pits. (Use of
burn pits finally ended in
2021.)
In 2022, Congress enacted the PACT Act [“The Sergeant First Class (SFC) Heath
Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act”] to assess
and care for veterans exposed to toxicants. The PACT Act created one of the
largest expansions of VA
benefits ever enacted. Until the Trump administration hit the brakes.
Many of the features of the PACT Act required specialized services provided under contract with private-sector suppliers, but the Trump administration in early 2025 canceled at least 650 of those contracts.
Trump cancelled contracts that
provided the necessary personnel and resources to conduct outreach to eligible
veterans, screen applicants, and process claims—cutting the heart out of the
PACT Act. Evidently not everyone in the Trump administration is proud of their
efforts to undermine the PACT Act. US Senate investigators have accused VA Secretary
Collins, of trying “to hide the truth from Congress” about staff cuts and
contract cancellations related to PACT.
Dismantling the VA through privatization, staff cuts, and
contract cancellations means future veterans will face a fragmented,
profit-driven system that doesn’t understand military service and doesn’t know
what veterans have been through. In truth, every cut, every step toward
privatization, every canceled contract is a betrayal of the promise we have
made to all those who serve: When you return, we will take care of you.
This piece has been updated with the information that the Trump VA ended collective bargaining for most of its unionized staff.
Peter Montague, Ph.D., is a widely published journalist and historian, a fellow with the Science & Environmental Health Network (Ames, IA), and a member of the National Writers Union (UAW Local 1981, AFL-CIO).
