For Task & Purpose coverage of Project 2025’s proposals for the U.S. military and Department of Defense, click here.
Project 2025, a policy guide that could be the blueprint for a second Donald Trump term, would revamp the Department of Veterans of Affairs with proposals to increase privatization, narrow the eligibility criteria for health benefits and replace civil service-style employees with political appointees in its ranks.
The document begins with an historical summary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, VA, and its current challenges meeting an aging, migrating population of veterans while modernizing and keeping costs within its budget. Chapter 20, which is dedicated to VA reforms, was written by Brooks D. Tucker, former VA Chief of Staff during the Trump Administration.
“Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State,” the manual states. “The VA must continually strive to be recognized as a ‘best in class,’ ‘Veteran-centric’ system with an organizational ethos inspired by and accountable to the needs and problems of veterans, not subservient to the parochial preferences of a bureaucracy.”
Task & Purpose reached out to six national veterans advocacy organizations for comment for this story. Three said they had no comment on Project 2025’s policy recommendations, the others did not respond, nor did two experts on veteran affairs at a major defense policy research organization.
Some veterans argue that Project 2025’s goals would impact veterans directly before any changes to the VA. In a July 9 op-ed, Michael Embrich, a veteran and former member of the secretary of Veterans Affairs’ Advisory Committee on the Readjustment of Veterans, wrote that the proposed cuts to federal agencies like the FBI and Justice Department could “disproportionately affect” the 300,000 veterans who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce.
But the project devotes an entire section to overhauling major pieces of the VA.
In a similar fashion with its goals for other federal agencies, Project 2025 envisions a VA that is run by more political appointees. The policy calls for rescinding all “delegations of authority” granted by the Biden Administration and transferring Senior Executive Service employees out of positions designated for presidential appointees to “ensure political control of the VA.”
The project would rescind all Department of Defense policies “contrary to principles of conservative governance” including abortion services and gender reassignment surgery, arguing that “neither aligns with service-connected conditions,” which would warrant VA care.
Project 2025 also wants to revisit in-person work policies which transformed after the coronavirus pandemic to more hybrid and remote-work centric allowances for VA employees. The policy manual alleges that the work policies have turned into the VA’s current Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and their staff routinely working from home, having limited in-person meetings and relying more frequently on video conference calls.
If policies associated with Project 2025 are enacted, veterans that were previously found eligible for service-connected disabilities may see those revised or taken away.
The Project 2025 manual acknowledges two of the largest VA policy changes that expanded the number of veterans who qualified for service-connected disability claims: The 1991 Agent Orange Act and 2022 PACT Act (Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act). The manual says that the two “ambitious authorities” have overwhelmed the VA’s ability to process new claims and adjudicate appeals, requiring more employees to stay up to date. The manual also says that the inclusion of injuries related to Agent Orange and Burn Pits/Airborne Toxins has caused “historic increases” in spending.
In May, the VA announced that it granted its one millionth benefit claim related to the PACT Act which changed the VA’s assumption of vet claims if they were present in a war zone where toxic chemicals were likely present – like at most U.S. bases during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. When it was signed into law, the Wounded Warrior Project described the PACT Act as a policy that “opens up the door to pre- and post-9/11 combat veterans who served in areas of exposure.”
With the VA’s growing number of service-related health conditions, Project 2025 states that “some are tenuously related or wholly unrelated to military service” – the core issue for granting or denying service-connected disability claims.
Project 2025 provisions may mean that fewer health conditions qualify a veteran for disability benefits. More specifically, Project 2025 calls for a revision of the disability rating awards for future claims while “fully or partially” changing them for existing veteran claims.
More private healthcare
Project 2025 envisions bringing in more private companies for providing VA health care delivery, disability medical examinations, claims processing, and overall bureaucratic operations like acquisition and technology integration.
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It also calls for a larger budget for veterans to access private medical providers with the VA’s Community Care network which uses third-party providers – TriWest Healthcare Alliance and Optum Serve. In July 2022, a VA official told the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee that Community Care accounted for 44% of the VA’s health care services. The VA has also steadily increased the amount it spends on Community Care from $7.9 billion in 2014 to $18.5 billion in 2021.
With the expansion of Community Care, Project 2025 also wants to codify VA MISSION Act access standards in legislation to “prevent the VA from avoiding or watering down the requirements in the future.” Passed in 2018, the act gives veterans more flexibility to access care outside of Veterans Health Administration.
A September 2022 study by the RAND Corporation found that increased Community Care could complicate coordination of veteran care between the VHA and community providers leading to confusion for patients, duplicative tests, increased costs, and lower-quality care. Researchers did note that Community Care has improved access for rural veterans living far away from VHA facilities but also said that “research on this topic has been limited.”
The policy also calls for a “veterans bill of rights” so veterans and VA staff are better educated about the process for dispute resolution and their benefit entitlements which includes their eligibility for Community Care. Currently, veterans are not routinely informed about their eligibility unless they request information or are given a referral, the manual states.
Changes to VA structure
Project 2025 calls for an assessment of VA health facilities’ misalignment and rising infrastructure costs. The policy notes that the VHA’s 172 inpatient medical facilities across the U.S. are 60 years old on average, underutilized, and inadequately staffed.
The envisioned restructuring of VA health facilities would look at expanding community outpatient clinics in areas where it costs the VA too much to maintain an entire healthcare campus for a dwindling or already small population of veterans.
The Project 2025 manual also calls for the VA’s healthcare system to publicly report on its ability to reach quality, safety, patient experience, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness standards similar to those set by the Medicare program.
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