To the editor:

What’s on the health care horizon for the nation’s 18 million veterans? These “suckers” and “losers” — as Trump calls them — could see their medical benefits dramatically reduced. The ultra-conservative Project 2025 playbook calls for significant changes via rescinding Veterans Administration “policy directives that are contrary to principles of conservative governance …”

Journalist Will Fritz writes that one aspect of this policy is curtailing veterans disability benefits. The VA assigns ratings resulting from disabilities caused or aggravated by active service ranging from 10 percent to 100 percent in 10 percent increments. Veterans with disabilities receive tax free benefits. Project 2025 suggests the incoming president should implement a “review disability rating criteria in order to save money.”

Michael Embirch, a former policy advisor to the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, states the VA would be directed to “go through every veteran who’s been rated, who currently gets their veteran’s — what they call benefit compensation check — every month, and they would say, ‘Hey, we want to take a look and see if you still have tinnitus.’ And if they determine you don’t, they want to take your benefit away …”

According to Embirch, revising disability ratings for future claimants would mean many disabled veterans wouldn’t get benefits at all. The plan’s stated goal of “preserving them fully or partially for existing claimants” would allow the government to cut benefits, even for veterans who have completed their service and are receiving benefits.

For five-time draft dodger Trump, “conservative governance” means cutting back on benefits for “suckers” and “losers” while implementing tax cuts for the country’s wealthiest.

George J. Bryjak

Bloomingdale