The DOGE Impact Tracker

Cuts to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health system will delay care for military veterans in the Atlanta area, vets and healthcare providers tell WABE 90.1:

Veterans advocates say additional cuts to the Atlanta VA would worsen delays many veterans already experience in accessing health care and other services.

“A lot of veterans have to wait three months before they can even see a specialist or even get their first appointment when they get enrolled in benefits,” said Erika Alexander, ​​a licensed social worker with the Atlanta VA Veterans Crisis Hotline team and President of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 518 at the Atlanta VA.

“There will be delays with their income verification, with them getting pharmacy services, resources for shelters in their community, for housing vouchers, transportation. Those are the types of departments that are going to be impacted by the reduction in force,” she added.

An Army vet in Phoenix, who served in both Afghanistan and Iraq, has a rare type of cancer but said that his medical requests to the VA have been rejected due to DOGE.

Mother Jones reports:

In February, after Donald Trump returned to office, Army veteran Mark Puhl’s medical requests to the Department of Veterans Affairs—for surgery and a chemotherapy port, both related to cancer for which he had already received care through the VA—were denied. Puhl, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, holds the cost-cutting efforts of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” responsible.

“They approved me to see the surgeon who would do the surgery,” Puhl, 37, said. “They approved an MRI on top of that, to make sure that there were no vessels wrapped around the lumps they wanted to cut out to test for cancer. But then they denied the surgery itself.”

Puhl, who served Army tours in both Afghanistan and Iraq, was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoblastic lymphoma, a rare type of cancer, in 2022. Puhl was exposed to burn pits—open-air incineration of trash, often toxic, by militaries in the field—and said that a VA doctor had previously connected his case of lymphoma to his service.

Among the thousands of workers fired at the Department of Veterans Affairs is Joy Marver, who told the New York Times how she checked herself into a hospital for emergency psychiatric care a day after being locked out of her office at the agency.

In addition to her personal story, she is worried about the ripple effect of such cuts on the agency’s ability to provide health care to veterans:

She said she was worried about layoffs affecting the doctors she relied on at the V.A.: the specialist who treated her T.B.I. [traumatic brain injury], the neurologist who managed her migraines, the therapist with whom she relived the rocket attacks, and the psychiatrist who rushed out of a meeting to see Marver as soon as she crossed the bridge, consoling and hugging her until she finally stopped shaking.

The V.A. had been scrambling to hire psychiatrists for years to make up for what it called a “severe staffing shortage” as veteran suicide rates rose to epidemic levels, but now a few new ones had been fired by DOGE because they were still probationary employees. Each V.A. psychiatrist was already responsible for 500 patients, and lately those patients had begun reporting increased rates of anxiety and stress because many of them were also employed by the federal government.

“Nobody wants to serve this country more than veterans,” Marver said. “It’s personal for us.”

“That’s why I love working here,” her doctor said.

The firing of probationary employees at the VA, including the manager of a small center in Cheyenne, has veterans in Wyoming concerned about their mental health needs, reports Channel 9 News:

The veteran suicide rate in Wyoming is 50% higher than the rest of the country.

In Cheyenne, there’s a small VA center dedicated just to mental health. On Feb. 24, the office manager was fired. A Marine veteran, she was one of thousands of probationary employees fired by email for their performance. 

But a recent [performance] review obtained by NBC News was glowing, her manager writing: “As a veteran herself, she listens with empathy. She is the first person our clients come into contact with.”

“I would be concerned with positions that are front-line positions that touch veterans every day,” said Justin Tripp, a 13-year Navy vet who is the state commander for the VFW.

This week, Disabled American Veterans launched a new initiative to “solicit and highlight the stories of disabled veterans and spouses who have experienced service setbacks or been fired from jobs across multiple federal agencies as part of the White House and Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) efforts to downsize the federal government.”

The group’s national commander, Daniel Contreras, says: “It’s heart-wrenching to hear from veterans who are contacting us with fear and anxiety about the future of the benefits, services and health care they’ve earned.”

Among them is Mandy Midgett, an Air Force veteran who was fired from the Federal Aviation Administration, who posted a video in which she said: 

“This takes a toll on my emotional health since I have led a life of service and giving back to the American public. It is also my primary source of income, and now I will be cutting out some things in my life to ensure I can pay my bills.”

Fox-5 NY reports:

An Army veteran who worked for a hospital in the Bronx says he is one of the federal workers who have recently been laid off in the Trump administration’s latest round of cuts.

“Absolutely crushed, as if all the sacrifices I made and all the work that I did was just destroyed by a single thoughtless email,” [Luke] Graziani said.

Soon after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs laid off 1,000 workers in early February, some veterans were impacted by staffing shortages. WTKR in Hampton Roads, Virginia, reports:

Hampton Roads Army veteran Valerie Jackson said she was shocked to learn that her VA appointment had been canceled, as she receives mammograms annually. 

“My father passed from cancer and my daughter has cancer. So I have to have this done every year,” Jackson explained.

Jackson said the VA Medical Center in Hampton told her on Feb. 14 that her Feb. 24 appointment had been canceled due to a staffing shortage, and that June was the earliest the center could schedule her a mammogram elsewhere…

“It’s one thing to save the money, but if your people are going to suffer, is it really going to benefit them?” said  Jackson.