Life will become more difficult for an untold number of this country’s “suckers and losers” — Trump-speak for military veterans — just over nine million of whom receive some or all of their healthcare through the Veterans Administration.

The number of VA medical professionals has declined every month since Trump took office. The VA has lost 2,000 registered nurses since the start of the current fiscal year (Oct. 1, 2024), approximately 1,300 medical assistants, about 1,100 nursing assistants and practical nurses, 800 doctors, 500 social workers and 150 psychologists.

VA Secretary Doug Collins stated that veterans’ healthcare would not be affected by the reduction of 30,000 jobs this year via attrition, a hiring freeze and the government’s deferred resignation program.

Are these cutbacks Trump’s initial step in privatizing the VA? Manuel Santamaria, a disabled army veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, states that any attempt to transform the VA into a private voucher program is a “betrayal … it takes away the government’s accountability to veterans who have sacrificed for them.”

ProPublica (a non-profit, investigative news organization) reports that some job applicants are turning down offered positions, worried these jobs are not stable, unsure about the VA’s future and how changes will affect them. According to ProPublica, VA records indicate that nearly four in 10 physicians who were offered VA employment from January through March of this year declined the positions offered — quadruple the rate of doctors rejecting employment offers during the same period last year.

ProPubica notes that VA officials in Texas reported (in an internal presentation) that approximately 90 people had refused job offers “due to uncertainty of reorganization.” As a consequence of low morale, staff members did not recommend that these applicants work at the medical center. According to an internal VA report from May, vacant VA purchasing agent positions in Dayton, Ohio, resulted in delays in acquiring hundreds of prosthetics.

In March 2022, President Biden signed a bill — Honoring our Promises to Address Comprehensive Toxic Act — commonly known as the PACT Act. In the three-plus years since that legislation became law, approximately 1.2 million military personnel, many with serious health issues resulting from exposure to toxic burn pits, are receiving VA medical treatment and benefits. The current VA staff cutbacks could not have come at a worse time. In some parts of the country, the wait for medical appointments is much longer. Records indicate there is a two-month wait for primary care appointments at the VA center in Augusta, Maine.

The Guardian newspaper reports that even before recent staff departures, a VA inspector general report (August 2024) found that 86% of the agency’s 170 medical centers and more than 1,000 clinics reported a “severe” shortage of doctors, while 82% of facilities reported a severe shortage of nurses. The Biden administration added approximately 10,000 “mission-critical” healthcare professionals to VA facilities between May 2023 and January 2025.

In March, President Trump signed an executive order eliminating collective bargaining rights for approximately 1 million federal employees — including about 80% of the VA workforce — on “national security” grounds.

The wife of a Marine veteran disabled as a result of his service in Somalia (1993) said her husband has not had a primary care physician since his doctor left the VA last winter. The woman did not want to be identified, fearing her statements might affect her husband’s VA benefits. She stated the VA “was never like this before. There’s a lack of staff, empty rooms and locked doors. It feels like something that’s not healthy.”

Patricia Fielding, a VA registered nurse who works in the spinal injury ward of a VA hospital in Augusta, Georgia, stated that recent staff departures had resulted in a “very unsafe” condition for some paraplegic patients. Fielding notes that because of staff shortages, nurses from other departments — who lack proper training to “safely care for a spinal cord patient” — have to fill in.

Between April and early July of this year, Fielding filed reports alleging these shortages “posed a serious threat to the health and safety of patients.” In a June 6 report, Fielding stated that two registered nurses had been assigned to care for 10 patients. Seven were on ventilators and all had a high risk of falling.

Fielding wrote that “Staff were not appropriately trained” and the unit was staffed with “unqualified” or “inappropriate personnel.” She added that shortages of trained personnel resulted in forced overtime, leaving many nurses exhausted. “Nurses stay until their moral distress is so great that they can’t take it anymore, and then they leave.” The VA stated that reports of unsafe conditions in the Augusta, Georgia, spinal cord unit were “false … the unit is fully staffed.”

Pondering Fielding’s account, the first thing that came to mind was General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, selecting Army Captain Luis Avila — who was severely wounded in action — to sing “God Bless America” at Milley’s welcoming ceremony as chairman in 2018. After Avila sang, Trump congratulated him, then said in a voice loud enough for multiple people to hear: “Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.” According to General Milley, Trump told him to never let Avila appear in public again.

For all their differences, Captain Avila and President Trump have one thing in common — the number five. Avila had five combat tours. Trump is a five-time draft dodger. The title of MSNBC’s report about Captain Avila singing God Bless America and meeting the president says it all: “Disabled veterans seem to get respect from everybody but Donald Trump.”

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George J. Bryjak lives in Bloomingdale and is retired after 24 years of teaching sociology at the University of San Diego. Bryjak served in Okinawa and Vietnam with the First Marine Air Wing.