The Department of Veterans Affairs is lying to the American public about its own mental health care policies. Right now, veterans across the country are being cut off from life-saving therapy — not because of clinical decisions, but because of bureaucratic mandates that are forcing VA doctors’ hands. The VA says there are “no limits” on how many appointments a veteran can have. That is a lie.

I know it’s a lie because whistleblowers inside the system brought me the proof.

Since I launched On Offense 9 months ago, VA mental health professionals — psychologists, social workers, psychiatrists — have been reaching out to me from across the country. They told me about an internal policy shift that arbitrarily limits how many therapy sessions veterans can access, no matter how severe their PTSD, depression, or suicidality may be.

To be clear — this policy of cutting off veterans from needed mental health care began under previous administrations, including Trump’s first term and Biden’s. But since January 2025, under Trump and Secretary Doug Collins, the policy has expanded — and so has the enforcement.

Now, CNN has published a national story confirming what I’ve been warning about for months.

The VA’s response? Have their chief propagandist, Pete Kasperowicz — a former politics editor at Fox News — gaslight the public. Deny everything. Pretend the whistleblowers and their evidence don’t exist.

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The Whistleblowers’ Warnings

Back in June, I wrote about the first wave of whistleblowers who came forward to warn that veterans were being cut off from care. Doctors from the very VA hospital that saved my life and facilitated the toughest part of my recovery described being pressured to end therapy with patients who still needed it. They shared internal emails from supervisors warning that if they didn’t follow the new limits, this would be reflected in their performance evaluations, and ultimately their jobs could be at risk.

Since that story went live, even more whistleblowers have reached out. Providers from additional VA hospitals shared documents showing the same pattern. Veterans who had been in crisis told me how their therapy was abruptly ended, even when those veterans’ VA records showed a history of suicide attempts. Clinicians offered proof: screenshots, emails, and policy memos on VA hospitals’ official letterhead.

But here’s the problem — those documents could be used to identify who spoke up. And this Trump-run VA has made it clear: if you speak out, your career is over. That’s why I couldn’t publish the full receipts myself. Instead, I handed these documents, whistleblowers, and sources to a national news outlet.

Patients Are Being Cut Off

The CNN investigation confirmed what whistleblowers told me: the VA is enforcing strict limits on how many one-on-one therapy sessions a veteran can receive. For some, that cap is as low as four sessions. Others might get 8 or 12. But the pattern is clear: the VA is pushing providers to end care early, no matter what their professional judgment says.

A Marine veteran named Michael told CNN that after finally finding a therapist he trusted — someone who helped him survive addiction and multiple suicide attempts — his therapy was suddenly cut off. He described it as being “thrown away like yesterday’s trash.”

Clinicians said the same thing: they’re being ordered to carry out policies they know are harmful. One provider told CNN, as several told me, that ending therapy felt like a moral injury. Another said they felt like a perpetrator of trauma, forced to retraumatize patients by abandoning them.

The Excuse of “Episodic Care”

The VA isn’t admitting what it’s doing. But if you dig into the internal memos, the justification for these limits on therapy is rooted in a treatment model called “episodic care.” On paper, this model uses metrics to track outcomes and set treatment durations. In theory, it’s supposed to make care more efficient.

Veteran patients are screened for things like PTSD, depression, and insomnia, before, during, and after treatment. They receive a score based on the severity, frequency, and life-altering impact of symptoms. For those whose symptoms improve significantly between screenings, it may be appropriate to reduce the frequency or duration of their therapy sessions — or it may be clinically appropriate for them to conclude therapy altogether. But that’s not what’s happening here.

In practice, a shift to “episodic care” is being used as a cost-cutting weapon that ignores the clinical realities of trauma recovery.

Under this model, veterans get slotted into a pre-defined number of therapy sessions with the expectation that they’ll be “better” by the end. But if they’re not? If they relapse? If their trauma flares up or if ending therapy triggers another crisis? The model doesn’t account for that. Because it’s not about care. It’s about compliance.

Providers have told me that how well a patient is doing — or how badly they’re doing after being cut off — doesn’t factor into whether they get more sessions. The VA’s message is clear: meet the quota, or move on. They’ve taken an evidence-based way to make mental health care more efficient and turned it into metrics-based rationing.

The Real Reason: A Manufactured Scarcity Model

If you’re wondering why the VA is pushing episodic care so aggressively — here’s the real answer: the VA doesn’t have enough mental health professionals to treat every veteran who needs care for as long as they need it. That’s not because there’s a shortage of clinicians in America. It’s because Trump and his Republican allies have spent years deliberately gutting the VA’s workforce, and sabotaging Democrats’ efforts to staff up and fund the department.

One of Trump’s first priorities after returning to power was to empower Elon Musk — and the meme-coin clowns he installed to oversee VA staffing like it’s a crypto startup — to fire 80,000 VA employees. That’s not a typo.

Eighty thousand public servants — they wanted them gone, with no plan for who to cut or where. Clinical staff, support staff, schedulers, social workers.

Thanks to public pressure (in part thanks to this readership) that number was reduced to just north of 30,000. The loss of those VA employees — many pushed out with draconian policies designed to make the VA a miserable place to work — has still had a devastating effect that we’re just beginning to see the symptoms of. Entire layers of the VA’s capacity were wiped out. And that’s just the beginning.

At the same time, Trump’s allies in the Republican-controlled Congress are draining billions of dollars from the VA healthcare system and rerouting that money to for-profit private providers. These contractors have virtually no oversight, no incentive to retain complex or high-risk patients, and no commitment to the long-term health of veterans. Coincidentally, these corporations just happen to be very generous when it comes to supporting Republicans’ political campaigns.

What we’re seeing now is the logical result of those attacks: a health system that’s being forced to operate on a scarcity model. One that prioritizes valuable data extraction from veterans over patient care and sustained, positive, long-term health outcomes. One that pushes veterans through a revolving door of treatment “episodes” rather than building long-term therapeutic relationships. One that treats clinicians like bureaucrats and veterans like burdens.

This is all about making the VA fail — so Republicans can privatize it.

The VA’s Public Lies

When CNN reached Secretary Collins’ spokesperson at the VA, he issued a blanket denial. Kasperowicz claimed there are “no limits” on mental health care. They said no providers are being disciplined. They pretended the documents CNN reviewed — the same ones whistleblowers gave me — don’t exist.

That lie is dangerous.

It’s dangerous because it tells veterans who are suffering that the system hasn’t changed — when it has.

The VA, despite Republicans’ repeated sabotage, has improved drastically since I first got care there 18 years ago.

Kasperowicz’s lie is dangerous because it tries to tell whistleblowers that speaking out is pointless. And it tells his fellow political appointees at the top of the VA that they can get away with anything, even when the truth is staring them in the face.

It’s clear that the VA is trying to bait us into dumping sensitive evidence into the public and putting our sources at risk. We won’t betray the trust of these patriots who work at the VA, and we will keep telling their stories in safe ways that keeps the pressure where it belongs: on the Trump Administration, Secretary Doug Collins, and the political hacks and propagandists that they’ve installed throughout the VA system.

Why This Matters Now

This isn’t just a story about health care. It’s a story about what happens when authoritarianism takes control of the largest integrated health system in the country. They cut care, slash benefits, and gaslight both patients and the public, and then try to leverage media stories to erode trust in the very same institution they’re leading, blaming it for their failures.

Under Donald Trump and Secretary Doug Collins, the VA is no longer being run in the best interest of veterans. It’s being run like a propaganda machine. Professional ethics are being thrown out the window. Civil servants are being silenced. Healthcare policies are being dictated by political operatives, not medical professionals. And when those policies hurt people — when veterans are cut off from life-saving care — Trump and Collins’ stooges in the VA press shop lie about it.

We’re seeing this weaponization and sabotage of federal agencies across the entire government. History has shown us what happens when the government is used to serve a political agenda instead of the public good. We know how dangerous it is when truth-tellers are punished and propaganda is rewarded.

What Comes Next

I’m not done. I’m continuing to document these stories. More whistleblowers are coming forward, and I’m working to connect them with journalists who can protect them. I’m not going to hold onto stories for my own likes or clicks — I’ll keep feeding sources and evidence to outlets with far greater reach than I’ll ever have.

If you’re a VA provider who has seen these policies in action, I want to hear from you. If you’re a veteran who’s been cut off from care, tell me your story. And if you’re a journalist, watchdog, or member of Congress who wants the truth — I’ll gladly make these connections for you. Trump and Collins don’t want you to see them. But they can’t hide them.

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