The walls inside the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in downtown Denver are lined with more than a century’s worth of military memorabilia, artifacts, and photos.
“Colorado is actually significant because we're one of the founding states of the VFW — VFW Post One,” said Navy veteran Jesse Eastburn, who helps lead the post.
With the United States now at war with Iran, Eastburn said groups like the VFW are already thinking about the next generation of veterans who may soon return home.
“We have to support the veterans that are being sent,” said Eastburn. “You know, they don't get to make the war. They don't get to make the policies.”
The VFW was chartered by Congress in 1936 and has hundreds of posts across the country that advocate for the benefits veterans have earned. For many, the organization also provides a place to gather, share experiences, and support one another after military service.
“It's going to be more important for organizations like ours to step up when those guys get back,” he said.
A big part of that support involves helping veterans navigate the health care system, where, increasingly, that care is happening outside the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Under the Trump administration, the VA has been expanding its Community Care program, which allows veterans to receive treatment from doctors and hospitals in the private sector when the VA can’t provide services quickly enough or close to home. This shift has accelerated as the agency undergoes its largest reorganization in three decades.
The program gives veterans more options and improves access to care — its original intent — but the aggressive changes are eroding the VA’s specialized health system, according to national VA policy expert Suzanne Gordon.
Gordon, co-founder of the Veterans Healthcare Policy Institute, said the private sector can’t take on that growing demand — and many local, private providers are not equipped to treat the complex conditions that veterans often face.
“Private sector providers, under the law, are not required to have the same kind of competence and training in dealing with veteran-specific problems,” said Gordon.
Those challenges can include combat-related trauma, toxic exposure, physical disabilities, and complex mental health conditions that VA clinicians are specifically trained to treat.
Gordon said shifting more veterans into the private sector is leading to delays in care and fewer safeguards for veterans experiencing mental health crises, which the VA’s system was built to handle. She worries those gaps could lead to rising substance use and suicide among veterans if the trend continues. Colorado is in the top 10 states for veteran suicides.
At the same time, the VA has eliminated various key services and tens of thousands of health care positions nationwide, even as leadership said it needs more staff to meet growing demand. The agency has historically struggled to hire medical providers.
Gordon said the VA’s health system can only take so much.
“Imagine a table, which was fine, and could hold very comfortably, you know, 12 diners and a lot of food,” she said. “You're just piling more and more on this table, and it's gonna crack.”
For veterans trying to get treatment today, their health care options often include a mix of public and private providers.
Army veteran Brian Sims helps veterans struggling with trauma and substance use navigate recovery services in the Denver metro area, often working alongside the VA to connect veterans with care.
“I do believe that the necessary steps to give someone, a veteran, access to that care must happen through privatized options,” Sims said. “But I do not believe that the system itself should be privatized.”
Another Army veteran in Denver, Rob Williams, said veterans might have differing opinions about the issues of privatization, but they still need to make their voices heard when it comes to decisions about the VA.
“No, we're not going to get veterans to all agree on something like that,” Williams said. “But we do need to come together, and we do need to force our elected officials to take a good, hard look at this.”
One of those elected officials is Colorado’s U.S. Rep. Jason Crow — an Army veteran himself. He warns that the expansion of Community Care is going too far.
“What this administration appears to be doing is taking that narrow exception, taking those allowances that are really important for our veterans, and they're taking it to an extreme,” said Crow. “They're using this as a doorway to privatize the entire system, which would be detrimental to veterans.”
VA leaders reject that characterization.
VA Secretary Doug Collins has repeatedly said “Community Care is VA care,” arguing changes are meant to strengthen VA health care, not replace it.
KUNC News also reached out to the VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System in Aurora — which serves much of the state, including Rep. Crow’s district — seeking comment about rates of Community Care use for Colorado veterans, staffing levels, and how recent federal reorganization efforts are affecting veteran services.
In a written statement, VA Eastern Colorado Health Care System spokesperson Eve Derfelt criticized the request and defended the agency’s performance:
“VA asked KUNC several times for specific information about alleged increased referrals to community care, including specific examples from Veterans, so we could look into these allegations. Unfortunately, KUNC refused to provide any information supporting this hearsay, so it could tell the biased story it wants to tell ... VA’s success isn’t measured by how many people it employs. It’s measured by how well the department serves Veterans, and the truth is that VA is working much better under President Trump than it did under President Biden."
But for the Navy veteran Eastburn, that assurance feels especially consequential as the war with Iran continues. He hopes veterans’ health care stabilizes before the next wave of service members returns home.
Still, he’s not convinced that it will happen anytime soon.
“Maybe they'll figure it out. Maybe, you know, things will get better,” Eastburn said. “The realist in me says, I don't see it happening anytime soon. You know, it's one of those things. It's just like you sit there and you go, what the hell's going on with this anymore?”
For Eastburn and other veterans, what happens to the VA now will shape the care the next generation receives.
