VHPI Special Report: "A Second Trump Term Would Decimate Veterans’ Healthcare and Benefits"

Read Special Report:  "A Second Trump Term Would Decimate Veterans’ Healthcare and Benefits: Analyzing the Impacts of Project 2025 on the Veterans Health and Benefits Administrations" Every day, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) delivers high quality care and benefits to millions of veterans – a fact consistently backed up by independent academic research. Throughout his 2024 presidential campaign, Republican Donald Trump has unfairly attacked the department and promised reform, but he – and his party— have offered few tangible policy proposals. Project 2025, a 920-page document produced by the Heritage Foundation has, however, provided a detailed agenda for a second Trump administration. It is authored by a former Trump staffer and written in cooperation with more than 140 people who formerly worked for the Trump administration, including those who helped lead his VA. While Trump has disingenuously distanced himself from Project 2025, he previously supported Heritage’s efforts to “lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do” should he win in November.  The Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute has just published a comprehensive analysis of Project 2025’s disastrous recommendations for the Veterans Health and Benefits Administrations. Highlights of probable damage include longer wait times and worse outcomes for compensation and pension decisions, more errors in VA claims’ decisions, anti-veteran regulations to narrow or eliminate some benefits, and a purge of top VA career officials.  More private, for-profit companies will perform disability medical examinations, creating a “blended workforce with more contractors to process claims.” This will make it much harder for veterans to get a disability rating based on their service-connected conditions. The millions of veterans who are provided free access to VA healthcare will see a system gutted by budget cuts, outsourced care, and ceaseless attacks on organized labor, which represents tens of thousands of veteran employees. In short, the Heritage plan aims to finish, in a second Trump administration, the VA demolition job that was launched in the first one. It’s an unconscionable attack on  generations of brave Americans who’ve sacrificed for their country, and who’ve fought for, and won, the best healthcare and benefits system in America. Read Special Report:  "A Second Trump Term Would Decimate Veterans’ Healthcare and Benefits: Analyzing the Impacts of Project 2025 on the Veterans Health and Benefits Administrations"