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Aug. 17, 2025 - Stew Peters Show
01:05:39
Health Care in Crisis: The VA’s War on Its Own
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In shocking news earlier this week, it was reported that the VA is having a very difficult time filling occupancies.
They're having a very difficult time filling vacancies.
Employment vacancies at the VA are extremely difficult to fill.
There was a report put out just a few days ago that said that it was damn near impossible for the VA to hire quality people and retain them.
We're going to go through a little bit of this information.
Ultimately, I haven't read all of it, but ultimately what I believe this is going to end up saying is that because Doug Collins and President Trump through the work of Doge has stated that they are going to cut thousands of jobs from the VA system by the end of this fiscal year,
I'm guessing that this report and this article and any other news is going to be shifted towards, well, this is all Donald Trump's fault because and Doug Collins' fault because they want to cut staffing.
They want to make cuts to the VA.
So let's dig into it.
I'm not going to start spouting off at the mouth about my opinion and all that stuff just yet, because I think that we should go through the information.
So today's conversation is going to be geared around the VA hospitals and their difficulty finding people to fill these jobs within the system.
So stick with us.
Don't go away.
start now.
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And let's get started.
So recently, just a few days ago, the VA had put out that they received a, not a survey, but they received a report.
A watchdog was doing research and they conducted surveys and they compiled all this data.
And the conclusion that they came to was that the VA is having.
an extremely difficult time filling open vacancy.
And there's many different opinions about this.
There's many different reasons why that we all could come up with.
And I'll start off by saying when I initially started checking out this information, my first thought was, well, isn't it difficult everywhere?
Not just the VA.
But we'll get into that.
So anyway, I don't know.
that it is all that much more difficult than the civilian market.
I believe without knowing a whole lot of information, I believe that part of the issue is going to be compensation for medical professionals who are specialists in their field, whatever that specialty is.
I imagine that if you can pick anybody, it doesn't matter what side of the aisle that you sit on, it doesn't matter where your beliefs align, but anybody who is looking for a job in a specific field.
Let's just say I'm a cardiologist.
If I am looking for a new job as a cardiologist, let's say I'm moving to a new city, is a job at the local emergency room or emergency medical center or whatever or hospital, is it going to pay the same as the VA?
Is the government going to pay these people the same as they can make in the civilian market?
And my initial response, my initial feeling would be probably not.
Since when anywhere can anybody get government work that pays better?
If you're doing an honest job, where do you get paid better than the same exact position in the civilian world?
And I don't know that those positions, especially for doctors and nurses and psychiatrists and psychologists, I don't know that those opportunities are going to be better at a government facility, whether it be the VA or not.
I don't know that those opportunities are going to pay better than they can get anywhere else.
So that would be my first initial reaction, my first initial opinion about it.
But let's dig into the information here and I have some other stats to share with you later.
So here we go.
Government run medical centers serving nation's veterans have reported an increase in severe staffing shortages, with many hospitals having trouble filling jobs for doctors, nurses, and psychologists according to an independent watchdog for the VA.
It was just this last Tuesday, the report from the VA's Office of Inspector General is based on surveys from late March and early April that were taken in one hundred thirty nine different veterans health administration facilities.
So these are CBOX community based outreach clinics, so like your basic neighborhood doctor's office for veterans, the VA medical centers, the hospitals, and then everything in between.
Severe staffing shortages are not necessarily an indication of vacancies, but refer to particular occupations that are difficult to fill.
So even in the opening statement.
of this particular outlet, They do say doesn't necessarily indicate vacancies, but it refers to occupations that are more difficult to fill.
And of course, specialty medical professionals are probably difficult to fill, especially in a government agency, if I had to guess.
The surveys were taken just weeks after it was reported in early March that the VA had planned to cut eighty thousand jobs out of four hundred eighty four thousand, though the so called Department of Government Efficiency also known as DOGE, the VA later reduced.
the figure to nearly thirty thousand jobs to be cut at the end of the fiscal year, which is for those of you who don't know, the military uses October to September.
So the September 31st or September 30th will be the last day of fiscal year 2025 for the purposes of government agencies.
The survey reflected a fifty percent increase in the reporting of severe staffing shortages for specific jobs, both for clinical occupations that include doctors and psychiatrists and for non-clinical jobs.
And these are such things as like VA police, the people that clean, so the custodians.
There's teams of people here in Minneapolis at the VA in the basement.
There's a whole team of people that do nothing but clean medical instruments.
They sanitize them.
They spend many hours in this room locked down in biohazard suits and they're cleaning medical instruments and things like that.
There's also teams of people that are stocking supply closets and getting everybody the things that they need to do their jobs, bandages, IVs.
DVDs, blood tubes, whatever it is, tape, all that stuff.
Anything that you need when you go into a doctor's office, all that stuff, well, all that has to be taken from point A to point B so that the people can use them on you.
So there's a lot of behind the scenes, people.
So we're not just talking about doctors, specialists, nurses, psychiatrists, mental health providers.
We're also talking about.
coding people, things of that nature.
And then also the VA has their own police department.
Nearly all the facilities, 94% of them reported a shortage in medical officer occupations that include doctors, while 79% reported shortages for nurses.
The report noted that several shortages for medical officers and nurses have been identified every year in the report since 2014.
So this is not anything new.
And I think that we know this.
I mean, we've seen for many, many years.
I personally started using the VA in 2007.
And ever since then, there's been many times where it's difficult to get an appointment.
You got to wait months.
Sometimes you go and the appointment ahead of you runs twenty five minutes late just because they don't have enough staff to get everyone checked in and weighed and blood pressure, and then the doctor's running behind because once you I believe once you are running late on one patient, it becomes a waterfall effect, and everybody for the rest of the day then is running behind.
I guess maybe one of their only hopes is that somebody no calls and no shows or just cancels in the middle of the day or in the middle of the morning so that they can get back on track.
I'm sure it's a whole juggling act all day.
But interesting to know that these issues that we're talking about aren't new.
And so the response that this gets, I believe, is not going to really be accurate to what the reality is.
It's not really going to show that just because Doug Collins and Donald Trump have talked about cutting jobs.
Now there's not a bunch of people just up and fleeing the VA.
They're not just giving up their jobs because somebody says they're going to cut the workforce.
I would imagine that most people are going to hope and pray that it doesn't happen and that they won't be affected.
But I guess I can't and I shouldn't speak for those people.
The VA's press secretary stressed in an email that the report is not based on vacancies and is therefore not a reliable indicator of staffing shortages.
The report simply lists occupations facilities man, the report simply lists occupations facilities feel are difficult for which to recruit and retain, so the results are completely subjective.
They're not standardized and it's unreliable, according to the VA press secretary.
He said the vacancy rates for doctors and nurses are fourteen percent for doctors and ten percent for nurses, which he said are lower than most other healthcare systems and in line with normal VA historical averages.
Now, I thought that was an interesting piece of information, so I found some other data.
What I looked for was whether or not there's reports on the civilian medical sector.
And of course there was.
And I asked and I researched and I was looking for what are the difficulties for medical professionals in the civilian sector?
Like what are the percentages?
Right?
Like here we hear that 14% for doctors and technicians.
ten percent for nurses is what's vacant in the VA system.
So ninety percent of all nursing jobs in the VA according to this are full.
Okay, eighty six percent of all positions that are doctors are full.
So we're only ten percent short of nurses, fourteen percent on doctors.
So now if we look at this, let's just do nurses, right?
Nurse practitioners sixty percent of nurse practitioner opening.
openings stay open after sixty days reflecting a nationwide push to expand primary care access.
So in the civilian sector, sixty percent of nurse practitioner jobs remain open for much longer than sixty days.
Agency nurses, these flexible travel based nursing roles also face shortages with nearly fifty eight percent of positions unfilled after sixty days.
So it would seem to me that if these numbers are accurate in both sources that I'm looking at, well, the VA is way up above the civilian medical community.
And so I guess my question would be why is this I shouldn't say why is this news, but I'm guessing I'm wondering why is this news?
Why is this news, although not very widely reported, but it did make it to more sources than some.
and some other stories that probably should get more attention.
Why is this so high on the list of things to thrust in front of the faces of Americans that are looking to consume news and content and see what's going on in the world?
Well, let's continue on the article and maybe we'll figure that out.
Jacqueline Simon, who is the policy director for the American Federation of Government Employees, said the survey the surveys reflect the Trump administration's profound hostility towards the federal workforce and what she said are plans to privatize the VA ultimately.
So there's this there's this big battle between the unions and we talked about this last week how the VA has said they're doing away with union negotiated occupation, they're doing employment, excuse me, they're doing away with it.
They're doing away with it so that they can hold people accountable.
And the folks who are showing up to work every day and have this attitude that, well, you know, I'm in the union, you can try to fire me if you want to.
Those are the types of people that they don't want there, they want to push out.
And now, don't get me wrong, I believe that unions aren't a horrible thing.
I don't think that unions are going to be the downfall of American blue collar workers or workers of any kind.
But they do protect their people.
And maybe to their credit, unions historically over time have done a really good job at protecting their people and making sure that they're treated fairly and this, that, and the other thing.
And maybe this losing union negotiated contracts in government facilities or just in this instance the VA, maybe it's one of those, maybe it's one of those things where a few shitbags screwed it up for everybody.
Maybe majority of the people do good work, they show up on time, they go above and beyond when they can and need to.
They really care about taking care of veterans.
But at the end of the day, just like everything else, just like everything else that happens to us in our society, in your work, in family, just in life in general, the masses, the majority are going to be the ones who dictate most if not everything for everybody else.
And so if we have union negotiated employment going on at the VA and most of those union workers show up to work and they have the attitude that well, I'll do what I want.
Of course I'll do my work, but I'll get it done on my own terms.
I'm just going to float through, or maybe even there are people that just don't do anything and rely on union protection to keep their job, to keep their paycheck coming.
Well, those are the people that screw it up for everybody, even the ones that are doing a good job.
And so we can make the case that, well, you know, this doesn't mean everybody sucks.
And I think that most people just assume that, right?
Like not everybody is a complete dbag.
Not everybody does a bad job, not everybody shows up to work with a bad attitude.
Not everybody is to blame.
And so why do those people, why are they the ones that are getting cut out?
Why are they the ones that are losing their union benefits?
Well, it must mean.
because just like everything else we talk about, usually there's something to do with money, power, control, one of them by themselves, or all of them lumped together.
So it must mean my first thought would be it's costing these places a whole ton of money and they're not getting enough work done.
And maybe the VA and the powers that be have realized and identified that we can do all of this work.
We can provide great customer service to veterans who come here for care, and we can do it with thousands less people.
Hence then we're going to save some money, which with more money in the bank, in the VA accounts, we could probably pay medical professionals, something that's more along the lines of the civilian workforce.
Now, I also am not a thousand percent clear on the salary gap between VA doctor and civilian doctor.
I'm not sure how big the gap between a civilian cardiologist and a VA cardiologist is.
And maybe they do hire doctors that work for both.
I mean, how many times have you went to the doctor and they say, Well, you know, doctor So and so is only here on Tuesdays and Thursdays and the fifth Friday of each month or the eighth Friday of each month.
I don't know.
Maybe that's a thing too.
Let's continue here.
So this Jacqueline Simon lady continued on.
and said, This is a deliberate effort to incapacitate undermine veterans support for and approval of the care they receive in VA hospitals and clinics.
They'll have to wait much longer for appointments, there won't be specialists available, and they'll have no choice but to go to the private sector.
See now, none of these union people want any privatization of VA health care.
Because that means people are going to lose jobs, right?
There won't be the need for what did they say up to here up top?
There won't be a need for four hundred eighty four thousand employees.
I mean, that's a lot of people.
It's a lot of mouths to feed.
Simon also noted the VA's announcement last week that it was terminating collective bargaining agreements for most VA bargaining unit employees, which could further hurt recruitment.
The VA said in a news release that the move will make it easier for VA leaders to promote high performing employees, hold poor performers accountable, and improve benefits and services for American veterans.
Huh?
Well, how do you argue with that?
We'll get back to that.
US Senator Mark Warner said in a news release Tuesday that the Trump administration has made it harder for public servants to do their jobs and ultimately harder for veterans to get the care they've earned.
We also know from recent job reports that applications to work at the VA are plummeting.
That's another comment from this Warner guy, Senator Mark Warner.
And he represents a very apparently a very veteran dense concern.
constituency in Virginia.
How do skyrocketing staffing shortages and declining applicant pools make it more efficient for veterans to access the care and services they deserve?
The answer is that they don't.
That was the closing remarks of US Senator Mark Warner.
Well, mister Warner, how do staffing shortages make it more efficient?
It doesn't seem that there are staffing shortages.
Now that is that we are assuming that the people that write these articles and put them out and the people that conduct this research and then publish it are telling the truth.
And if this data that we talked about very briefly is truthful, well, then it would seem to me that there aren't any shortages.
So then what do we do to make the VA more efficient?
for the clientele that comes in there to use the services.
What do we do to make the benefit, the benefit journey, I guess we can call it.
What do we do to make that more efficient?
What do we do to make that a little bit easier for the people, the veterans that we say deserve all of this treatment and benefits and things of that nature?
How do we make it easier?
And so I believe that mister Warner kind of is out of pocket on this because for decades for many, many, many years it's been very well documented the experiences that veterans have had at the VA.
It hasn't been efficient.
It hasn't been user friendly for a long time.
So I guess I don't know what he's talking about.
I mean the data shows that it was at eighty six percent or eighty four percent of doctor vacancies are full, ninety percent of nursing vacancies are full.
Mental health vacancies are, what did they say?
It was up at like eighty two percent, something like that.
So who's telling the truth?
Is this watchdog group that conducted these surveys and this research?
Are they a thousand percent accurate?
And who did they talk to at these VA facilities?
Who did they talk to?
Where did they get their data from?
I'm sure they talked to employees, I'm sure they talked to veterans, I'm sure they talked to administrators.
But did we talk to the VA employees who are excited to be at work?
Or do we talk to the guys who are just there floating because they know they have union protection and losing a government job, I mean, you hear it all the time.
If you've worked in government, especially the federal government, there's many places within government work where you will hear people say, All you got to do is show up on time.
You know, and then keep your hands to yourself and those things that are like egregious and against the law that'll get you put in jail or fired on the spot for sure.
Sleep in that work, you know, stop stupid shit.
Other than that, you hear people talk about, man, you got to mess up really, really bad to get fired from this place.
And these are government, these are federal government.
These are the people that are in charge of, that are bestowed upon to do all of these jobs that are supposed to benefit us, the taxpayer.
And so what's really going on?
Who did we talk to?
Where did this data come from?
I don't know.
the VA press secretary seems to think that it's unreliable.
Is that true?
Maybe.
Who really knows?
But I find it very difficult to believe that we have this crisis going on in the halls of VA, and it's new.
And now, now we're going to demonize the president.
We're going to demonize Doug Collins.
We're going to demonize all these people.
And the one common denominator of all of these folks are that they're feuding across their lines and so like even that makes it more difficult to consume this information and then to think about it critically given the information you're given, where do they come up with it?
And is it just political theater?
Is this just people putting out information to make the other side look propaganda type bullshit?
It's possible, but this is the information that we have to go on.
And so it takes you and me and everybody else who decides to dig into this to be critical of the information no matter where it came from.
Is Donald Trump telling the truth?
Maybe not.
Is Doug College telling the truth?
Maybe not.
Is the media telling the truth?
Probably not.
And so what's the lesser of two evils?
And at the end of the day, are the consumers, the veterans, the patients, are they getting the care that they are promised?
And I think in a lot of places in VA, the answer is probably yes.
But for the people that aren't and the people who are suffering and are going without, who are hurting, or whatever the case may be sick, it's a big deal to them.
And so when you read things like, well, you know, I mean, it was it's very well deserved, this care and these benefits very well deserved.
Well, tell that to the guy who's been waiting for ninety days to see a specialist and is in pain or he's sick or can't sleep or can't sta give a shit that people, other people have had good experiences at the VA or that the civilian medical the medical places are a lot better or a lot worse and the VA's better or worse.
They don't care about that.
What they care about is that they were told that they were going to have care, they were going to have these benefits and all these things that are set aside just because you made the decision to sacrifice and serve in the military.
And when they need it, the people who are really in need can't get it that makes it a big deal because like we talked about earlier with the employees the folks who are having more negative experiences or have a bad attitude or this or that or the other those are the people that that bring
bring the things to light because the folks that go to the VA and they have a good experience and they check in they see their provider they they check out and make another appointment and they walk down to the pharmacy and they sit there for 25 to 30 minutes while they wait for their prescription to be filled.
And maybe in the meantime, while you're waiting for your medication to be filled, you go down to the basement of the medical center to the blood draw clinic and you wait there for 25 minutes.
And every now and then you go and sit in the chair in the blood draw clinic and you get the new person who's not really all that great at their job yet.
They're not very confident and they got to stick you four or five times before they can actually get any blood out of your arm or your hand or wherever they decide to try to take blood from you.
The people that go through that, they're the ones that are bitching about the VA and they're doing it a lot louder than the people who are praising the VA because when you walk in there and you expect to have an experience that's positive, that's going to bring you some clarity if you're looking for it for your condition or your sickness or whatever.
The folks that are going there and getting the care that they assume and count on, They're not going to say anything good, bad, or indifferent.
They're going to leave their appointment and they're going to walk out to the parking ramp, get in their vehicle, and go back to work or go home or go to lunch or do whatever the hell they're going to do with the rest of their day.
And it becomes a big deal because these were promises that were made to each and every person that chose to put their hand on a Bible, raise the other one, and then and then make good on their commitment.
They're doing or did what they said they were going to do.
And so when places like the VA fall up short, it becomes a huge deal to the community, to the veteran community anyway because now we're not we're not getting collectively we the the culture, the veteran culture in America is not necessarily getting what they were promised.
Even if I walk in there and I get great care, which has happened, I have gotten great care at the VA at times, but my battle buddy goes there and he only gets good care once every three or four times he goes.
But he's constantly having issues.
Well, that pisses me off.
I mean, we're family.
We trained together, we fought together, we almost died together, we came home together, we were at our kids' birthday parties and together, all these things.
Well, why the hell can't you do what you're doing for me for him?
It shouldn't be that hard, I mean everybody's situation, personal situation is different, yeah.
But just like everybody else, when I go to work, I need to leave my personal things outside of the shop that I work in.
So I don't know if that's a an excuse that's ever even used, I don't know.
And holy crap, we went way over time.
I got to take a break.
We'll be right back.
Don't go away.
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Join today at StuPeters.tv Hey guys, welcome back here.
Let's just continue on down the road here.
I wanted to talk about...
Because as we talked about.
earlier, the press secretary for the VA anyway said that we're not really all that short.
The article in the research and the report that was put out says that they're extremely understaffed, and this is a crisis, this is an emergency.
But let's talk about this.
So according to Indeed and some other sources, let's just go down.
I have a list here of different medical specialties and their vacancy information.
So pulmonologists and rheumatologists, both of those are at sixty six and sixty five and a half percent.
So we can say sixty six percent of all openings, all vacancies in the United States of America, sixty six percent of them after sixty days of being posted remain empty.
And as we talked about earlier, nurses, sixty to sixty three percent of all nursing vacancies in the country in the last year and beyond have remained vacant after sixty days.
Cardiologists, radiologists, and emergency medicine physicians.
So cardiologists and radiologists fifty five and a half percent are still open after sixty days.
Emergency medicine physicians fifty two percent.
Psychiatrists, fifty five percent of them are still vacant after sixty days of posting.
Vascular surgeons fifty four percent, urologists fifty four percent, geriatrics.
Geriatrics is a big one.
I mean, I'm forty three years old.
My wife is in her fifties.
When we become geriatrics, according to this information, who knows if there'll be anybody that specializes in it?
And if there is, will we be able to afford geriatric care?
Will anybody, any regular common person in the United States be able to afford geriatric care?
It says here there's a growing demand, but limited interest.
Currently, only seven thousand four hundred practicing geriatric physicians exist.
But according to Business Insider, estimates indicate that there is a need for about thirty thousand more geriatric physicians by twenty thirty.
So in five years, there's going to be a need for thirty thousand more doctors who specialize in taking care of old blue hairs, old folks.
Well, as a middle aged person, that makes me a little apprehensive to grow old, of course, but that's the one thing we we can't stop, right?
You can't stop water, you can't stop time.
They're going to keep doing what they're doing.
Let's continue.
Medical laboratory scientists and technicians.
Ongoing shortages are projected to reach a deficit of ninety eight thousand seven hundred lab professionals by the end of this year.
So these are the people who process your blood, who, you know, if you're a person that donates plasma, people that deal with that, people that do testing and what you call it when they take out a mas mass and test it.
All of these things biopsies, lab people, people that take your pee and your dookie when you got to turn it into the doctor to see if you got some other thing going on inside your body.
All of those positions.
By the end of this year, we're going to be nearly ninety nine thousand people short.
Sterile processing technicians.
They command growing demand and competitive pay.
And they don't get paid much.
I talked earlier in the show about like at the VA hospital here in Minneapolis, there's a whole team of people that are sterilizing equipment, that are wiping it down, that are like pressure, heat, steam, cleaning it, polishing it, all those things to make it look brand new for the next patient.
They're severely understaffed, and they got a whole lot of effing work to do.
Every time, and we all know, right?
Anytime you go into a medical facility, if you pick up this thing, and then when you put it down, it needs to be sent somewhere and cleaned.
If you touch this thing, you got to pick it up and put it down and then it needs to go somewhere that needs to be cleaned.
And then not only cleaned, but repackaged, put back on a shelf, and then there's another team of people that manage all the hospital supplies.
So now they got to take it off a shelf, put it in a cart or something, and bring it up to whatever clinic or whatever office it needs to go to and be organized, take inventory so that we know what we need for the next one.
So when we talk about this stuff, it's not just doctors.
It's not just nurses.
It's not just the people that make your appointments.
It's not just the guy that pushes you out after you had that one day outpatient surgery, that pushes you in the wheelchair out to the car, the medical assistant or the nurse or whoever, not just those people.
What about the folks that make sure the bathrooms are clean?
That make sure the place looks presentable.
There's shortages on all of these things.
And it would seem to me that the shortages and the open vacancies in the civilian medical workforce is a whole lot bigger of a crisis than we see at the VA.
And so what caused this?
What makes this an argument amongst politicians and bureaucrats?
Why is this an argument?
And quite frankly, I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that it was President Trump that said that they were going to make these changes.
Despite the fact that majority of the country voted for him based on the things that he said he was going to do and provide for everybody in this country, but the data shows that the things that he's doing and that he's talking about even in this arena, in the VA, is working.
And the other thing that I'd like to point out that we've talked about in prior shows having to do with the VA is that there's new ideas.
You know, Doug Collins was appointed as the Secretary of the VA.
He came in and he said he was going to make cuts.
We're going to cut 15% from the VA.
We're going to make it more efficient.
We're going to get better people so we can pay them a better wage and the quality of care for our veterans will be better.
And he has caught nothing but opposition ever since he made that statement.
The issue that we know for sure based on the information has been reported for the last eleven years, and I would venture to say that it's been going on a lot longer than twenty fourteen.
It's been going on a lot longer than eleven years.
Now, now we're going to make a big deal about it because somebody comes in with a fresh idea.
Is it going to work?
I don't know.
That remains yet to be seen.
It makes sense to me.
If we cut out X amount of people, it frees up capital, it frees up space.
We can get rid of some things that we're paying for that we probably don't need to be paying for.
We can get rid of people who aren't really doing their job the way that it should be done.
They're not getting enough done every day.
So now we're going to free up money, we're going to free up time and space and all these things to make the whole organization better for the people that work there, the doctors that are providing the care, the nurses that are providing care and assistance.
the people who are cleaning, the people who are sterilizing, the people who are handling supplies, the people who are cooking the food, the people that want to show up to work and do the job that they were hired to do and do it to a high level, as high a level as possible are the ones that are going to be rewarded.
Hopefully this means some pay increases for employees.
Hopefully this means higher starting wages so we can attract people to the VA that are at the top of their game.
What would happen if we made the salary for a cardiologist in the VA ten thousand dollars more a year than you could find in the civilian medical field?
Is that reasonable?
Is that plausible?
Maybe not.
But we seem to be talking about a lot of what ifs and foggy data and information anyway, so let's throw out some what ifs.
What if we could pay highly successful doctors who are at the top of their game more than they could make in the civilian workforce.
Would the care for veterans be better?
Yeah, I would think so.
If we could pay the people who are cleaning the instruments and tools, if we could pay them better, might they do a better job?
If we can offer these people a couple more days of vacation a year, if we can offer them flex time so they can take a day off here and there, whatever the case may be, are they going to come to work more motivated?
Are they gonna work harder?
Are they gonna do their jobs to the level it needs to be done for success?
Probably.
Maybe the problem is that when we hear employees of any certain place say, you know, you got to really mess up to get fired from here.
So don't worry, you'll be okay.
Maybe those are the people that we should ask to go find work somewhere else.
If our intent is to really increase the level and quality of care for the veterans who walk into the VA to use their facilities and all of that stuff.
We got to try something new.
Because as we were told for fourteen years and my opinion is for a lot longer, we've had these shortages.
And it's reflected in the things that we hear from veterans who are using the system.
And as we said before, you know, it's the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
The folks who walk in and have a good experience as they've expected to do aren't going to bitch but they're also not going to outwardly publicly praise the VA.
The folks that go in there and have a bad experience are the ones that are going to be the loudest.
The families of veterans who have lost their family member because of some mistake made at the VA, which happens a whole lot more than we ever hear about.
Those are the ones that are going to have a sour taste in their mouth for this organization, this department, this agency, or whatever.
They're the ones that are going to maybe not outwardly publicly on social media or podcast or on a news network, but they still tell their story.
And those stories get repeated.
And before you know it, we got five million games of telephone going on, and most of it is not accurate.
And what do we do to stop that?
I don't know.
Maybe, maybe, maybe we do make cuts.
Maybe we try something new.
Maybe the people who are excelling at their jobs, we pay them a little bit more to keep them motivated, to keep them there.
And the value of having somebody like that in your organization that is motivated, that is proud of the work they do and wants to do better, wants to climb the ladder, so to speak.
Those are the people you want for the long haul, and why?
Because they're going to train the next people that come in.
And they're going to be the ones that are able to tell the managers of the VA, hey, these folks, I don't know that they're going to cut it.
You want hard workers, dependable people to climb the ladder and be in leadership roles when they're ready.
That's how you build a culture around your business, around your place, your agency, your facility.
You build a successful culture by keeping good people, making sure that they're happy the best you can.
You're not going to make everybody happy all the time.
And let them teach the next round of people.
And when you pluck the good ones from there, they teach the next round, and so on and so forth.
And before you know it, things like this aren't as prevalent anywhere.
But we have to do a better job, in my opinion, of getting young people motivated to be educated, to do a good job, to not take the easy way out.
We have to do a better job of that.
Because as this says here, man, when we get to be geriatrics, we're screwed.
I mean, it's a staggeringing number of people that are going to be needed to fill these jobs in very short time.
And there's just nobody being trained to do it.
There's nobody going to school, there's nobody applying.
And I also don't think it's helpful.
I don't think it's helpful at all just to be hiring people to have breathing bodies in these positions.
I believe that bad workers make more work, which is another reason why making some cuts probably ain't a know that I don't know that keeping all of these people that aren't doing a good job is going to be worth the trouble.
And so again I'll say I applaud people like Doug Collins for having the balls to stand up anywhere and take shot after shot after shot and has not changed his tune.
It would seem to me that he really does care want them to have a better experience at the VA.
He wants them to be taken care of.
And I believe if he keeps down the path he's on, at some point he just might have the ability and the option to look all of these naysayers in the face and say, I told you and just let the results speak for themselves.
I for one am hopeful.
I for one am hopeful because I've seen people who have had bad experiences.
I've seen them and talked to them and had them explain to me what's going on.
And it's not advantageous to us wanting to continue to use the VA.
I believe there's probably many veterans who are hoping for privatization in the VA.
So they can go out and get better care and don't have to jump through a bunch of hoops.
But I'm guessing that those processes, if it happens, are going to be a bunch of hoops anyway.
Something needs to be done.
Something has needed to be done.
And now we're trying things that have never been tried, and I think it's a good idea.
Can it get any worse?
Maybe.
But the potential of it to get better is more attractive than wondering if it could get worse.
I mean, I'm sure it always can get worse.
But just maybe it's worth the gamble.
And maybe it'll get better.
But we won't know unless we try.
If we stick down the same old path that we were on for all the last eleven years or longer, nothing's going to change.
One of the most profound things that my wife has ever said to me is nothing changes if nothing changes.
I think it applies here pretty well.
Anyway, folks, that's all we have time for today, so we will be back next week.
Thank you for joining us and take care of yourselves.
Have a great rest of your weekend.
Good night.
We have a big problem and this is going to continue ongoing.
This is an outrage to America.
You talked about law.
This is a travesty to law.
There is no law.
the information money are completely controlled by a small group of people and if you say their name you're called an anti-semi I just don't understand how you have a country where your politicians have more allegiance to a foreign nation than they do their own.
I honestly think that we have literal treason going on right now where Israel's interests are being put before America's interests.
Is America a sovereign nation or are we being controlled by Israel?
People are always talking about they, they are out of control, they are killing us.
We have to identify who the real enemy is.
The Satanic Jews!
They control everything and mostly everybody.
What difference does it make if it's a baby or if it's an adult?
It's the same thing.
There's one little nation state of Israel that everybody's afraid to talk about.
It'll get you nuked off the internet.
It'll scare advertisers away from doing business with you if you talk about Zionist infiltration.
Are you a Zionist?
Yes, yes.
You have to get rid of APAC.
You have to get rid of, you know, the Israeli control over our country.
I mean, there's no I mean, because they clearly don't give a shit about it.
Are you part of the Jewish Conspiracy?
What exactly is the maybe?
I'm Jewish.
Those are the words that he told us that he would never use again.
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