Project 2025 Will Spell the End of Veterans’ VA Health Care

In this edition, we will focus on making our APWU veterans' family aware of what "Project 2025" has in store for veterans. Project 2025 is a political blueprint for a conservative administration published by the rightwing Heritage Foundation in 2022. It was written with the help of over 140 cronies from the 2016 Trump Administration. We must note that the Trump-era VA MISSION Act is the current law for veterans' VA Healthcare and is directly connected to the Project 2025 plan. Regardless of who wins the 2024 Presidential Election, the recommendations in this plan could be followed by any conservative politician.

Project 2025 calls for a 50 percent reduction in federal employees within a year, and a 75 percent reduction within four years. Veterans make up roughly 30 percent of the federal government workforce, or approximately 300,000, including more than 30,000 APWU Postal Service veterans, many of whom are disabled. Drastically cutting federal jobs would seriously affect veterans who rely on these positions, not only for employment, but for a sense of purpose in the community. Project 2025 aims to disband many federal government agencies, while privatizing others, and expand presidential control beyond the Executive Branch. In other words, Project 2025 is a plan to gut all of America's systems of checks and balances to enact an extreme agenda that would hurt all American veterans and their families. The Project 2025 plan proposes taking power away from veterans and everyday Americans, to give politicians, judges, and corporations more control over our lives.

Specific Ways that Project 2025 Harms our American Veterans:

• Project 2025 proposes cutting benefits for disabled veterans, making it harder for them to obtain disability benefits by reducing the number of medical conditions that veterans can claim to qualify for disability status. Veterans currently eligible for a disability rating, but who have not yet filed a claim, could be denied benefits entirely, while those who have already fi led claims, and been granted a disability rating, could see their VA disability benefits slashed.
• Project 2025 also aims to automate all claims, which would make it easier to increase denial rates, while cutting health care coverage for veterans and reducing the quality of care.
• Project 2025 seeks to cut homeless veterans' programs and abolish the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which plays a critical role in protecting veterans from financial fraud and scams. Project 2025 advocates closing numerous VA clinics nationwide, replacing them with community-based outpatient clinics that provide less or a total loss of critical health care services for veterans, especially those in rural areas.
• Project 2025 would not only call for the privatization of VA Health Care, but also the Department of Defense TRICARE system for those on active duty in the military and their families. This will increase healthcare costs by forcing those with TRICARE Medical Benefits to use private health insurance providers. Privatizing TRICARE would cut more than $59 million in military health care services. Project 2025 also has Medicare and Medicaid Social Security Health Care Benefits on the privatization chopping block as well.

If this Project 2025 plan is implemented, it would spell the end of Veterans VA Health Care and cause a dramatic increase in veteran homelessness and suicides. Veterans put their health and lives on the front line to protect all Americans. There are only 18 to 20 million living American veterans - that's just 6 percent of the entire U.S. population who has ever served in America's military. So, attention APWU veterans and civilians, Project 2025 is not our friend; Project 2025 seeks to destroy us. "Hands Off Our Veterans' Health Care Benefits!"

For more information, visit the Veterans Health Care Policy Institute (VHPI) at: veteranspolicy.org. ■

Source: Analyzing the Impacts of Project 2025 on the Veterans Health and Benefits Administrations (VHPI)