I use the VA, and I am lucky to have healthcare in this country, but it should be universal. Anything related to the military-industrial-complex often uses the 'staff shortages' excuse (among other 'give us more blank-check' excuses). The VA extends the military further into society (and normalizes the human costs of it). the VA is basically a subsidy to the military, under the guise of a different department (CFR 38). The military uses the VA to distance itself from actually being involved with people that it no longer needs, and normalize the human cost of waging endless war.

This is not just regular govt agency funding, it's military-related which is the anti-thesis of public benefit funding. VA embodies all of the negatives of military culture (cover-ups, lack of transparency, waste, exceptionalism, etc etc). If you want universal healthcare, then the VA is not some pre-version of it, the VA is just extending the military into society through other agencies. As military/VA funding has gone up, many other programs (actual social safety net programs) have had funding cuts. Meanwhile, Medicare is a great example of how govt-subsidized healthcare can actually work properly. just expanding medicare (possibly with a separate plan for the needs of the veteran patient population) would be the safest, easiest, and most efficient way to resolve a lot of problems, as well as facilitate the expansion of medicare.