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Earlier this year, doctors at Pennsylvania’s Veterans Hospital issued an alarm. The drastic cuts imposed by the Trump administration have spoken to higher in emails and caused “severe and immediate effects,” including “life-saving cancer trials.”
The email said more than 1,000 veterans will lose access to treatment for diseases ranging from metastatic head and neck cancer to kidney disease and traumatic brain injury.
“Clinical trial registrations have been suspended,” the email warned. “This means veterans lose access to treatment.”
The administration overturned some of its decisions and allowed some exams to continue for now. Still, other studies, including trials for treating head and neck cancer, are stagnant.
President Donald Trump has long been a promise to prioritize veterans.
“We love veterans,” he said in February. “We’re going to take care of them.”
After the Veterans Affairs Bureau began cutting contracts with employees, Secretary Doug Collins, whom Trump chose to run the agency, vowed that “veterans will notice changes for the better.”
However, dozens of internal emails obtained by Propublica reveal a much different reality. Doctors and other doctors at VA hospitals and clinics across the country have often sent hopeless messages to headquarters detailing how it harms veteran care. The VA provides health care to approximately 9 million veterans.
In March, Virginia officials across the country warned that critical resources (a database for cancer tracking) would not be kept up to date. As explained by Pacific Northwest officials, government efficiency was moving to kill contracts with external companies that maintained and carried out cancer registrations where information on patient care was collected and analyzed. Doge had marked it for an “immediate end.”
Officials at the VA Center in the Pacific Northwest said their funding for cancer research was “updated for immediate termination” after a review by government efficiency. Credit: Get by Propublica
The Detroit VA raised a similar alarm in an email, warning that it would “not be able to track tumor treatment and recurrence.” The emails obtained by Propublica detail various confusions. In Colorado, for example, layoffs to social workers led homeless veterans to wait for temporary housing to go with help.
The warning sent as part of Virginia’s longtime system warned the higher of problems, painting a portrait of a chaotic deflection at an agency that was mandated by Congress to expand the care and benefits of veterans facing Agent Orange just three years ago and other issues.
Physicians and other healthcare providers across Virginia are left scrambling and shortfall amid a series of cuts from the White House, employment freezes and other dict orders.
Pittsburgh VA officials have sent warnings about studies affected by employment freezes. These included studies on cancer, suicide prevention and toxin exposure. Credit: Get by Propublica
The bare, bare-out-the-mail, is particularly impressive as the previous cuts are warped by dramatic downsizing of staff and changes in priorities that the administration said are coming.
The VA cut back on thousands of staff this year. However, the administration says it plans to eliminate at least 70,000 in the coming months through layoffs and voluntary acquisitions. The agency, the largest integrated healthcare system in the United States, currently employs nearly half a million people, most of which work in one of the VA’s 170 hospitals and nearly 1,200 clinics.
Despite the expanded role mandated by Congress through the Agreement Act, their goal said, administrative authorities are to cut institutions to the size before the law was passed.
“The Biden administration understood what it means to pay for the costs of the war. It doesn’t seem to be the case with the Trump administration,” said Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat and the highest author of the deal’s law.
The document obtained by Propublica prepared an outline in March that Doge officials working at VA “transform” an agency focused on how to integrate operations and implement artificial intelligence tools to handle profit claims. One Doge document proposed closing 17 hospitals.
VA spokesman Pete Casperowitz said Propublica would not close the hospital. “We don’t create a VA policy just because a VA employee writes down something,” he said in writing. However, he said that the use of AI will be a big part of what is called the VA’s “reform” effort.
Kasperowicz dismissed the idea that the emails obtained by Propublica indicate Chaos.
“The only thing these reports show is that VAs have a robust and functional system to flag potential issues and fix them quickly.
Doge did not respond to requests for comment.
Last week, the White House announced a budget proposal calling for a 4% increase in the VA’s budget. That total includes more money for healthcare, but some of it will be used to pay veterans to seek care outside the VA health system.
More responses to the VA’s larger plan are scheduled to testify today when his first hearing at Capitol Hill takes office, where Collins will be testifying before the Senate Veterans Committee.
David Shulkin, who led the VA during Trump’s first term, said the administration is focusing too much on cutting, rather than communicating strategies to improve veterinary care.
“I think it’s very difficult to succeed with the approach they’re taking,” Shulkin told Propovica.
One way local VA officials have tried to limit the damage is to send high-priced warnings, officially known as the outline of the issue. And sometimes it works.
The VA reversed the decision after Los Angeles officials warned that “all chemotherapy” would stop unless “all chemotherapy” stopped.
And amid growing scrutiny, the administration has also created researchers exempt from cutting in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. The laid back social workers who helped a homeless veterinarian in Colorado were also brought home after about a month away from their work. Kasperowicz said four social workers were affected, but “their caseload was temporarily redistributed to other members of the homeless team.”
Warnings from staff across the country highlight how relatively modest cuts have affected the work of the VA’s health system, with cancer research and treatment being cited in multiple warnings to agency leadership.
“We absolutely felt the effects of the confusion around us. We’re already losing people,” said a senior researcher who spoke to Propoblica anonymously for fear of retaliation.
Referring to the research, he added: “We’re going to lose something that we can’t resume.”
And Kasperowicz told Propublica that the Pennsylvania problem has been resolved, but locals said it wasn’t, and the impact was ongoing.
In Pittsburgh, two trials treating veterans with advanced head and neck cancer that officials warned in March that they were at risk to hire a freeze warn that the Veterans Health Foundation, a nonprofit in Pittsburgh, is partnering with Virginia.
“That’s insane,” Kaffas said. “These veterans should have access to research treatment, but they can’t.”
A Pittsburgh VA employee sent a warning that they lost research staff due to a job freeze. Credit: Retrieved and highlighted by Propublica
The third trial to help veterans with opioid addiction did not halt. Instead, Caffas and another person involved in the study found that they were troubled by layoffs of key team members.
Regarding the cancer registry issue, Kasperowitz said it “had no effect on patients.” He added that the VA is moving to create a national contract to manage these registries.
Rosie Torres, founder of Burn Pits 360, a veteran advocacy group that pushed the law strongly, called emails to indicate “production crisis” and “guts lynching” for cancer treatments with disabilities.
It’s bad that decisions are being made without feedback from the veterinary community they influence, she added.
“We have a right to know if they are killing contracts that could affect the delivery of care,” she said.
Last week, Collins celebrated what he described as the result as the second Trump administration marked his first 100 days of office.
At the recorded address, he said under his stewardship, the VA had processed record numbers of benefits, ended “splitting” spending on diversity initiatives, and redirected millions of agency dollars from the “nonjudicial criticism” programme towards services that benefit veterans.
“We won’t stop working to put veterans first,” he wrote in Op-Ed that accompanied it.
Others say Collins doesn’t do that. Instead of focusing on veterans, one VA oncologist said, “We are spending a huge amount of time preparing for staffing catastrophes.”
“Veterans’ lives are going well,” the doctor said. “Let’s go back to work and take care of us.”
Alex Mierjeski contributed to the research, while Joel Jacobs contributed to the report.
