Slash the VA? No!
by Craig Wiesner - San Mateo Daily Journal - March 24, 2025
We got a call when my father was found crawling around the bushes outside his Florida condo at 2am, searching for my mother, who had died a month earlier. The emergency crew had convinced him that Mom wasn’t out there and got Dad safely inside. They looked at his medications and warned me that one medication looked wrong. I called his doctor the next day. She had prescribed an antidepressant after my mother’s death. I told her what had happened and what the emergency crew said. She replied “Look, I’m the doctor. Those people don’t know anything.” The conversation was over. I looked up the medication and there was a warning that seniors with dementia were at risk for death if they took it. Dementia? We flew my father out to California soon after.
My sister had signed Dad up for VA care and we decided to try that instead of the Medicare Advantage plan he had been on. At the VA Hospital in San Francisco a group of medical students and a doctor examined my father as I observed. They asked a ton of questions, had him walk back and forth, checking him out thoroughly. The doctor wanted to confer with the students and said they’d be back soon. My father, sitting up, dozed off and with his eyes tightly closed he seemed to be holding an imaginary ice cream cone that he carefully licked as he dozed. I opened the door to the hallway and asked if someone from the team could come back in to see what he was doing. One of the students came in and watched him. Her eyes grew wide and she said “I know exactly what this is!” A short while later the team returned and the doctor explained that they believed Dad had Parkinson’s-related Lewy Body Disease (LBD), a progressive brain disorder. He had been having terrible nightmares, including one where Nazi marching bands were trying to break into his apartment. Dad, by the way, was one of the last Jewish people at the WWII Dachau Concentration Camp, as an American soldier guarding Nazis on trial for war crimes.
We were blessed to have a VA specialist from UCSF who, after that hospital visit, guided my father’s care. Agent Orange, a chemical used heavily by the United States during the Vietnam war, is linked to a spike in Parkinson’s-related diseases in veterans and UCSF is one of the leading treatment centers for Parkinson’s. My father may not have been properly diagnosed if it hadn’t been for the VA. He could have ended up like Robin Williams, who had LBD, but was misdiagnosed and given medication that might have caused his suicide.
Although there’s no cure, the VA helped manage Dad’s symptoms for around five years. He got exceptional care from the VA Clinic in San Bruno, the hospital in San Francisco, and the clinic in Palo Alto. Every single person who had any involvement in my father’s care was wonderful, not just to him, but to me as his primary caregiver. San Mateo County’s Veterans Services Officer also helped get Dad a VA pension which helped pay for a wonderful Board And Care home.
In the hours before Dad eventually died, his VA Nurse Practitioner came to the house, held my hand and his, to prepare us for his last hours. She had just started at another job but knew Dad was dying and wanted to be there for us. My gratitude to the VA and my respect for their work are boundless, as boundless as my respect and gratitude for all of our veterans. I would like to see that care expanded to reach more veterans, especially in rural areas. Yet here we are in 2025 and the Republican administration, led by Elon Musk’s DOGE bros, is planning to slash 80,000 VA jobs. This is a slap in the face to all of those incredible VA employees and a bigger slap in the face to our veterans. Millions of veterans, impacted by exposure to burn pits in warzones like Iraq, who breathed in the 21st Century equivalent of Agent Orange, have recently been added to the VA care rolls thanks to the 2022 PACT Act. The VA needs more staff, not 80,000 less. Privatizing the VA is NOT the answer. Veterans require and deserve unique, specialized care, specifically designed for those who put their lives on the line for the rest of us.
If you agree with me, send the White House a letter or postcard demanding that they not slash the VA. 18 million veterans, who stood up for us, need us to stand up for them.
Please share your thoughts in the comments here or with me at craigwiesner.bsky.social