Bernie Rogoff is a Korean War-era Army veteran who’s spent his life advocating for fellow service members.
The 95-year-old led the push for Denver’s modern Veterans Affairs medical center, which opened in 2018 to serve Colorado’s nearly 400,000 veterans. Rogoff still calls it one of his proudest achievements and remembers it finally felt like “someone is listening.”
That hospital was meant to be a cornerstone for veterans in Colorado – a place where they could get the specialized care Rogoff says they earned.
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But since the Trump administration took office, that promise feels different. Under Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, the agency has laid off thousands of employees and is sending more veterans outside the VA to private doctors and clinics, saying the goal is to get them seen faster and closer to home through a program called Community Care.
For Rogoff, though, the care veterans have a right to, and the sense of belonging that comes with it, is slipping away.
“We have veterans who go to the VA and sit in the atrium just to be among their buddies,” Rogoff said. “Can you imagine what they must feel? It hurts. It hurts me.”
He says the agency's shift is a cost-cutting measure that puts veterans at risk.
VA officials push back on those concerns.
Amanda Villa, interim associate director for access at VA Eastern Colorado, says Community Care is an extension of VA services, not a replacement, especially in a state where many veterans live far from a VA facility.
“We have a lot of veterans that are living in rural communities down from Alamosa all the way up to Burlington, Lamar area,” Villa said. “Having that extra support from our community partners and having those providers really enhances our ability to extend that care.”
Villa acknowledges there are challenges with Community Care, in particular when veterans bounce between VA clinics and private providers.
Still, she says it’s another way to reach veterans who might otherwise go without care.
“I don't necessarily see a trend that we're going to completely go out to the community,” Villa said. “I think we're always going to have a need for VA care, and we're always going to have a need for community care to be our extender.”
That’s not how national VA policy expert Suzanne Gordon sees it.
She’s the co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute and points out how, in many parts of Colorado, there simply aren’t enough community providers for veterans to use.
“You have 64 counties in Colorado, 53 have shortages of primary care providers, with 38 having severe shortages,” Gordon said. “That means, if you live in certain counties in Colorado, there ain't no care there.”
Gordon adds that Colorado has triple the national average of patients to primary care providers.
She says VA systems in all states are feeling the effects of moving toward private care, and the consequences won’t stop with veterans.
Gordon also describes the push to privatization as driven by what she calls “a toxic cocktail of ideological dogma and greed,” warning the shift could hollow out the VA entirely.
“If you start depriving the VA of patients and staff, then you don’t have enough to justify a health care system,” Gordon said. “You don't have enough patients to maintain the skills of the staff. You don't have enough patients to have the teaching programs and conduct the research. Eventually, what ends up happening is you turn the VA into a Medicare program, where you're the payer, not the provider of care.”
David Ortiz is deeply concerned about that potential future coming to fruition.
Ortiz is a former state representative and Army veteran who was paralyzed from the waist down in a helicopter crash during the war in Afghanistan. He relies on specialized equipment such as wheelchairs, replacement parts, and bathroom chairs that private health plans often don’t cover.
“If you ask any of my civilian counterparts, any wheelchair users that live with paraplegia, that have to deal with private sector health care, they can barely get one single chair,” Ortiz said. “Whereas, because I'm service-connected, I get a main chair, I get a backup chair, I get an extra set of brakes for when they go down.”
Ortiz says the VA helps him avoid constant battles for the equipment he needs, and that the agency should leave its Community Care program for times when there are gaps that VA in-house services can’t fill.
“The things that I am able to get through the VA versus how hard I would have to fight in the private sector are night and day,” Ortiz said.
He worries that substance abuse and suicide rates among veterans will spike if this shift continues – Colorado is in the top 10 states for veteran suicides.
Democratic Rep. Chad Clifford is vice chair of the House State, Civic, Military, and Veterans Affairs Committee. He says the VA’s move toward private care is creating instability and damaging an already fragile relationship between the agency and the veterans it serves.
“We are now creating red tape where people don't even know what kind of care is available,” Clifford said.
Clifford adds that even lawmakers don’t know what’s coming next with veterans’ care and have no authority over VA policy.
“They cannot explain what is going to happen, nor can we,” Clifford said. “As the General Assembly, we don't have a clue what is coming down the pike. We are sitting on the front lines watching the television just like you to find out what might happen tomorrow.”
Veterans in the VA have, so far, been shielded from navigating the everyday civilian’s health care system, but that could change if privatization continues.
For the Korean War-era veteran Rogoff, that’s a mission worth fighting for.
“There is no private facility available that could provide what the VA provides,” Rogoff said. “I am concerned for my brothers and my sisters. We are at a precipice. It's a critical moment in our history.”
Editor’s note: This story states that the Department of Veterans Affairs “laid off thousands of employees.” To clarify, the agency is reducing its workforce by nearly 30,000 by the end of the fiscal year, which ends September 30. That figure includes hiring freezes, deferred resignations, retirements, and attrition.
