Earlier this year, veterans’ hospitals in Pennsylvania were alarming. Distributed cuts imposed by the Trump administration, they said that the higher e -mails caused “serious and immediate consequences”, including “rescue cancer”.
The e -mail states that more than 1000 veterans will lose access to the treatment of diseases, ranging from metastatic head and neck cancer, to kidney disease, to the cranial injuries.
“Enrollment in clinical trials stops,” warned an email, “which means that veterans lose access to therapy.”
The administration has canceled some of its decisions, which allowed some tests. However, other studies, including tests on the treatment of head and neck, were delay.
President Donald Trump has long promised to prioritize veterans.
“We love your veteranshe said in February. – We’ll take care of them.
After the Veterans Department began to conduct employees and contracts, to choose Trump to manage the agency, the secretary of the Collins promised: “Veterans will notice changes for the better.”
But dozens of internal letters obtained by PROPBLICA reveal a completely different reality. Doctors and others in hospitals and clinics across the country often send desperate messages to the headquarters in detail how the cuts will harm veterans’ care. VA provides health care for about 9 million veterans.
In March, VA across the country warned that critical resource – databases for cancer tracking – will no longer be aware. According to officials in the Pacific northwest, the Department of Government Efficiency was moving to kill a contract with an external company that supported and managed cancer register where patients’ treatment information is collected and analyzed. Dozh noted this “immediate abolition”.
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VA in Detroit raised a similar alarm in an email, warning about “inability to monitor oncology and relapse”. The emails received by Propublica in detail are widely used in detail. For example, Colorado dismissal of social workers was summoned by homeless veterans who were waiting for the temporary housing without help.
Warnings sent within the long system in VA to prevent higher problems, draw a portrait of a chaotic retreat to the agency, which was provided by Congress through the law on pact law three years ago to expand the assistance and benefits for veterans facing the cancer, and other issues after exposure to the agent.
Doctors and other medical professionals were abandoned, and short -term positions amid a permanent series of cuts, hiring freelances and other instructions from the White House.
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Particularly strange because the cuts will still be weakened as part of the dramatic reduction of employees and the shift in the priorities that the administration stated that it was going.
This year, VA has reduced only a few thousand employees. But the administration said it plans to eliminate at least 70,000 at the expense of dismissal and voluntary ransom in the coming months. The agency, which is the largest integrated health system in the United States, is currently nearly 500,000 employees, most of whom work at one of the 170 VA hospitals and nearly 1200 clinics.
Despite the extended role provided by Congress through the Law on Covenants, the administration officials said their goal was to prune the agency size before the law was adopted.
“The Biden administration realized what it means to pay at the expense of the war; it seems that the Trump administration does not,” said representative Mark Takano, the California Democrat and the chief author of the Covenant.
Documents obtained by PROPBLICA Show, DOGE officials, who work in VA in March, prepared the outlines to “convert” the agency that focused on the methods of consolidation and the introduction of artificial intelligence tools to process claims for benefits. One DOGE document suggested closing 17 hospitals – and possibly a dozen more.
VA press -secretary Pete Kasrovich said Propublica that there would be no closure of the hospital. “Just because the VA employee recorded something down, does not do it VA,” he said in a written statement. But he said the use of II would become a large part of what he called “reforms” VA.
Kasrovich rejected the idea that the emails received by Propublica Show Chaos.
“The only thing that shows these reports is that VA has a reliable and good functional system to bring out potential problems and quickly fix them so that we can provide the best assistance to the veterans,” he wrote.
Dozh did not respond to comment requests.
Last week, the White House published a budget proposal that requires a 4%increase in the VA budget. A total of more money for medical attention is included, although some of this will be used to pay veterans to seek assistance by the VA medical system.
More answers to big VA plans can come today when Collins are scheduled to testify to the Senate Veterans Committee, his first hearing on the Capitol Hill after coming to the post.
David Shulkin, who headed VA in Trump’s first term, said the administration was too focused on the cuts rather than the transfer of a veterinarian care strategy.
“I think it is very, very difficult to be successful with the approach they take,” said Shulkin Popublica.
One way of local VA’s local officials tried to restrict the damage by sending warnings-officials as a short number higher. And sometimes it works.
After the officials in Los -Angeles warned that “all chemotherapy” would stop if Washington did not give up the murder of the contract for the service, VA reversed its decision.
And, against the background of increased attention, the administration also made some researchers in Pennsylvania and other places released from the reduction. Social workers who assisted homeless veterinarians in Colorado were also returned approximately a month from work. Kasrovich said he was affected by four social workers, but “their load was temporarily redistributed to other members of the homeless team.”
Warnings of officials across the country emphasize how relatively modest reductions are still affected by the VA medical system, with the study and treatment of cancer are given in several warnings by agencies.
“We have absolutely felt the impact of chaos around us. We are already losing people,” said one senior researcher who spoke with Propublica anonymously, fearing revenge.
Addressing the research, he added, “We will lose things that cannot restart.”
Although Kasrovich told Propublica that the problems in Pennsylvania were solved, the locals said there that this was not the case and that the impact was ongoing.
In Pittsburgh, there are two lawsuits on the treatment of veterans with advanced head and neck, which officials in March warned are at risk of hiring, according to Alana Kaff, heading the non -profit organization of Pittsburg, a health veterans fund.
“It’s insane,” Kaff said. “These veterans should be able to access treatment, but they can’t.”
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The third lawsuit that will help veterans with apioid dependence were not stopped. Instead, according to Kafas and another person involved in the research, it was registered by the layoffs of key team members.
As for the problems with the cancer registers, Kasrovich stated that “it does not affect patients”. He added that VA is moving to create a national contract for managing these registers.
Rosie Torres, founder of Burn Pits 360, a group of veterans propaganda, which also pushed the legislation strongly, named electronic letters that indicate the obstacle to the treatment of cancer “Crisis in Creation” and “varieties”.
That decisions are made without the contribution of the veterinarians they affect, even worse, she added.
“If they kill contracts that can affect medical care, then we have the right to know,” she said.
Last week, when Trump’s second administration celebrated its first 100 days in office, Collins noted what he called it.
In the recorded address, he stated that under the guidance of VA, he had recorded record numbers for payments, completed the “dividing” costs for diversity initiatives and redirected millions of agency from “critical” programs that have a mission back to services to benefit the veterans.
‘We will not stop working to put veterans at first wrote in the accompanying op-te.
Others say Collins did not do this. Instead of focusing on veterans, one oncologist VA said, “we spend a lot of time preparing for the personnel disaster.”
“The life of the veterans is on the line,” the doctor said. “Let’s go back to work and take care of them.”
Alex Mireyski contributed to research, and Joel Jacobs contributed to the report.
