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Comment by simonsarris | Hacker News Reader

It's so difficult to evaluate this stuff from afar.

In 2019 there were 399,000 workers. Now 482,000. In 2022, the Biden admin tried to slash 50,000 workers and was stymied, and then the VA hired 61,000 the following year.

What's the right number? I'm sure people leaning one way politically will confidently say one thing, though they may have said something else in 2022, and vice versa. I find it hard to have a problem with a plan if its at least partially originating internally, and its hard to say there's no problem if the current and previous administration were both trying to curtail growth.

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The PACT Act was a new bipartisan statute, passed in 2022, that expanded the VA's responsibilities and how many people were eligible:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honoring_our_PACT_Act_of_2022

I feel like this should be higher because of facts.

    The PACT Act is perhaps the largest health care and benefit expansion in VA history.[22] The PACT Act brings these changes:

     - Expands and extends eligibility for VA health care for Veterans with toxic exposures and Veterans of the Vietnam, Gulf War, and post-9/11 eras
     - Adds 20+ more presumptive conditions for burn pits, Agent Orange, and other toxic exposures
     - Adds more presumptive-exposure locations for Agent Orange and radiation
     - Requires VA to provide a toxic exposure screening to every Veteran enrolled in VA health care
     - Helps VA improve research, staff education, and treatment related to toxic exposures

Literally things that we should do if we are going to send kids off to fight and then expose them to these things.

I only have health care now due to the PACT Act. Absolutely pissed about what is happening to the VA now.

This is what happens when people (a lot of veterans/current army personnel, also basically all gun nuts) vote for a guy who very actively avoided serving his country in vietnam war, thanx to nepotism of his uber rich parents.

Such person will never hold veterans in high esteem, all people under him are meat bags to use and throw away once not needed and long term care for wounded is expensive, especially in US. Compare it to somebody who actually went through the experience, be it just mandatory draft or actual combat.

My biggest issue is that the current cuts are not being done with any sort of plan beyond "What can I get away with". Hiring at big organizations is complicated and people are not fungible no matter how much companies like Amazon push them to be. Wanting to slash 50k and hire 61k could make total sense if the overlap of skills is limited or non-existent.

I'm pretty left leaning these days, and I'd be fine with cuts, even large cuts around, just with intention and reason behind them. I'm not a fan of the tear it all down that's going on right now.

I get this vibe, but I also wonder roughly how much intentionality and thought went into hiring these folks in the first place? Kinda seems like when it comes time to hire they're mostly focused on "what can I get away with".

Like any large company, this does happen and the fix is the same. You replace someone at the top with a mandate to change the culture and they take hard looks at things and replace at the next level down as needed, and rise and repeat until you've replaced enough folks that the ship has turned around. It takes time, but it's the healthy way to turn the ship. There's nothing special about government employment being any different than private sector.

The primary problem with the VA is not the staffing level, it’s the quality of care and responsiveness. If these additions were put in place address those problems then I’d argue they’re necessary. We made a commitment to our military members when they agreed to the oath of enlistment/office and we aught to live up to that.

The VA doesn’t and shouldn’t have unlimited funds but at the same time, cutting personnel without addressing the core problems seems like it’s only going to make things worse for veterans.

> it’s the quality of care and responsiveness

Both great in my experience, and in my friends I have seen in the VA system.

That said, I still hear old veterans bitch about it like it sucks, even as they're completely taken care of and hand held throughout the care process.

I'm a vet and so are many of my friends. I expect and demand that the VA honor the pledges it made to them. However, you might be right about some of that. Some of the VA complaints I've heard didn't sound that bad compared to what I've experienced with private insurance and large hospital systems. Which is not to say that it can't be, or shouldn't be, better! It should be, for everyone! But I confess that "I had to argue with the VA to approve my hearing aids" isn't exactly worse than trying to get UnitedHealthcare to pay for an ordered MRI.

I don't think too many people have an issue with the idea of "right sizing" the government. It's an organization meant to achieve goals; there's an approximate number of people needed to do this and anything beyond is waste.

What rubs a lot of people the wrong way is an executive branch run by billionaires acting with no constitutional or statutory authority to terminate the employment (and vital benefits that come with it) of tens of thousands of ordinary people without any real consideration for the institutional knowledge being lost, all in the name of "efficiency" and "cost savings", while the people in the executive branch have far more value than they could have ever produced in a human lifetime, and stand to benefit the most from such destruction.

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