“On Friday, February 15, the Department of Veterans Affairs quietly posted that the agency now has 48,985 vacancies – up nearly 4,000 since the VA started posting vacancy totals in August 2018. The muted rollout of the data – which is only tracked and posted because of a push for transparency from the American Federation of Government Employees – follows Secretary Robert Wilkie’s recent announcement to outsource care and shift funding away from the already short-staffed and underfunded agency…”
“Last month, the VA announced new access standards for VA health care that would harm veterans through inferior and delayed treatments as the integrated and specialized care offered by the VA is dismantled and replaced by private care that is demonstrably unable to deal with veterans’ unique needs. Workers, medical experts, and members of Congress raised immediate concerns that the existing funding and staffing deficits will be exacerbated by funneling more money into the private, for-profit sector, and questioned the lack of transparency around the development and implementation of access for veterans…” Read the full press release here.
Source: ‘The Administration is Setting Us Up to Fail,’ says VA Workers Union – February 20, 2019. PR Newswire.
