Project 2025's Controversial Plans for Veterans' Affairs

SSDD from VA.  (Same stuff, different day).  

    If we believe that "80.4% of Veterans trust the VA", then we could also believe that VA "will not lose key evidence" and that the October incident never happened, thus there is no need for 38 CFR 3.156 because VA always has our complete information, they never lose anything and mysterously find it again (some of the time).  But wait, Veterans continue needing to file 3.156 "NEW EVIDENCE".   The evidence is often "not new" but key evidence managed to get "gone" and so Veteran was denied.  Over and over again. 

    At least some of that problem was fixed when VA hired outside contractors to scan in the complete cfile, because VA cant be trusted with this, since VA has a "financial interest" incentive in losing key evidence.  

    This "Project 25" is an obvious attack on conservative (GOP): (as follows)

Quote

Conservative Goals and Ideologies

 

Project 2025, a presidential transition project organized by the Heritage Foundation, has been at the forefront of national political discourse in recent weeks. Celebrities, politicians, and everyday Americans have highlighted many of the controversial policy recommendations found in the plan. The project aims to build a governing agenda not just for the next January but long into the future. This ambitious plan operates on a scale never attempted before in conservative politics.

 

Potential Risks of Politicizing the VA

 

While some claims about the document’s contents are correct, other widespread assertions have proven false or misleading. The project has increasingly caused friction with the Trump campaign, which has preferred to avoid specific policy proposals. Trump has never publicly endorsed Project 2025. Politicizing the VA could lead to losing trust and efficiency in the services provided to veterans.

 

Impact on Nonpartisan Support for Veterans

 

  The above is pure politics, trashing the conservatives alleging the VA will do better on their own.  

The facts are far different:

      When given a choice, I will choose "community care" vs VA care.  Community care is health care provided by VA, under contract with local physicians and or hospitals.  Its an example of why VA needs more contractors, smaller and leaner VA, because VA is grossly inefficient.   This is in no small part to the economic theroy "economies of scale", explaining that huge companies (like VA) are massively inefficitent because they are too huge. 

      That sounds like its the conservative view, when I really just prefer private care to VA.  Remember, when I hire an IMO/IME doc, that doc is not subject to VA's control, and they will often write us a valid nexus, where VA docs will not.  

The devil is in the details.  Project 25 has been specifically written for a President who does not want to be viewed with a disabled veteran per a General that was with him at the time.

We heard in his own words his denigration of wounded and captured veterans while he pardoned a military man found guilty of murdering a parent and child for no reason per the witnesses.

So the VA has been politicized.  The current Secretary was appointed by the previous president.  No change by this one.  He is the Secretary who defended the VA's rewriting of SMC-t code in 38 CFR to make it much harder to get.

The same Secretary is the Secretary who sent the witness before Congress who said, the VA would ignore the proposed law to return guns to veterans who need financial supervision.  (that is mostly addicts who's NOK wants their money controlled to reduce their access to drugs or alcohol which means some abuse by NOK and should go before a judge, not just a VA adjudicator)

I went to a C&P examination provided by Optum contract.  The examiner's options were limited to questions on the DBQ.  No real examination was done.  The examiner had a title that included "Imaging" but no imaging was performed and according to her, not permitted by her contract.  This has been the case of very limited examinations of every private C&P I have had.  This is the first one who told me why.  It was not the order from VARO that did the limiting, but her contract. (first one I ask for a copy of the order for the examination because of the limited examinations)

C&P examinations have not changed with privatization except for an occasional physician that will ignore the contract to the best of their ability skirting the loop holes.

We have a mixed bag with the VA.  And privatized contracts have not improved it.

My nurse who provided my medication dispenser management was removed by canceling the contract in administration not by my primary care who is a VA physician.

Community care appears to be totally managed by a contractor.  It appears to be an HMO contract for services outside a 30 mile radius of VA care including Contracted CBOC facilities which again are limited in referral to specialist or for imaging.

The care I experienced in Los Angeles in the 1980s was far better.  By the 1990s it started deteriorating.  During the 1980s, fewer physicians at the VA had become physicians through VA scholarships which required service in the military or the VA for 6 years.  Many stayed on because of the ability to have a family life as well as a profession, giving up the extra they could earn in private practice.  Most of these were the best.  There are very few left.  Mostly we have only NP and PA care providers no at the VA.  And they are not given the highest quality imaging software so they cannot spot something the radiologist did not see and ask them about it.

The contract radiologist are limited in the software they can use by the price of their contract.  There is a great difference in an MRI read by the University of Colorado Medical School, with presumably the best imaging software and the VA contractor in Minneapolis.  The only excuse for no stenosis in a reading by Minneapolis one month after the multiple severe stenosis indications in the UCMC reading.

The mixed bag is because of politics in Health Care.  When Doctors became Doctors to be Doctors instead of becoming Doctors to get rich, we were at the top of the world in health care.  Now we are 38th.  19 below the 19 industrialized countries.  Well down into "3rd world class" in health care.

This is not just the VA.  It is also the private sector.  You get good care if you get a lucky draw or you are conned into believing you are getting good care, or you con yourself into believing you are getting good care.

We have a mixed bag at best.  Nothing like the superb medical care and responsiveness I received during my 20 years in Japan.  And I received a complete C&P examination while there.  The translation contractor botched it here.  My wife, before her passing, a certified translator from Japanese to English found the examination report easy to read, and in my favor while the U S contractor found most of those things in my favor illegible.  The contractor translated a motor bike as a bicycle denigrating the seriousness of my 1969 MVA.

Good luck with either the VA health care or community health care.  They are both way down compared to what you can get in 19 other countries.
 

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