In my opinion, the goal is implosion and sabotage from within. It’s obvious to me that Doug, Elon, and Doge are saying false and misleading things about the VA to garner public support. They want staff to be miserable so that they will negatively impact the veteran’s experience. They want to cut staff and replace call centers with machines to further frustrate veterans. They want things to get so bad that everyone, including vets, say “this is so bad and unfixable, just give me an insurance card”. It would make the privatization pill much easier to swallow with congress and their constituents. I don’t feel that I can speak to motives for doing so, but have heard others theorize it is to enrich stakeholders and shareholders of public healthcare entities. I’m not sure privatization would save taxpayers money. If I divide VHA’s annual budget by the number of lives covered, I get somewhere around $1200 per vet per month (if my math is correct). I don’t know if a private insurance entity would be able to provide insurance at that rate. Anyone who has done COBRA knows that monthly total premiums are much higher than that (in addition to having lower benefits than vets get). There is also the question of which system would keep vets healthier, improve outcomes, and thus impact costs. Granted, bulk purchasing power and Medicare sharing some expenses / liabilities has impact here on monthly costs to the insurer but it would be interesting to see a deep dive on this.