[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 15]
[Senate]
[Pages 19960-19961]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                               VA POLICY

  Mr. GRAHAM of Florida. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 
the attached article from the Gainesville Sun be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

               [From the Gainesville Sun, July 19, 2003]

                           Perverse VA Policy

       There is something perverse about the Bush administration's 
     push to cut medical services for veterans at a time when 
     America is fighting a war in Iraq with the help of tens of 
     thousands of reservists and guard members.

[[Page 19961]]

       Most of those citizen soldiers will come home to once again 
     take up their non-military lives and careers. And those who 
     do develop service-related illnesses and injuries (anybody 
     remember Gulf War Syndrome?) will invariably turn to a 
     Veterans Administration medical facility for care.
       In the North Florida-South Georgia region alone, about 
     5,600 reservists have been called to service for the current 
     conflict. When they come home, some may require the care 
     available at the Lake City VA Medical Center. But even if 
     none do, that medical center already treats about 36,000 area 
     veterans.
       And yet, a VA reassessment group--perversely called the 
     Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced Services, or CARES--
     has called for services to be eliminated or scaled back at 
     the Lake City VA and 19 other veterans facilities around the 
     nation.
       In response to a directive from Washington, local VA 
     officials have, albeit reluctantly, submitted recommendations 
     that would involve turning the Lake City medical center into 
     an outpatient clinic, transferring 230 nursing home patients 
     to private facilities--assuming adequate facilities can even 
     be found in the largely rural region--and/or transferring 
     patients to Gainesville's VA.
       The objective would be to save perhaps $6 million a year by 
     eliminating jobs and operational costs at the Lake City VA 
     center. That seems like a false economy in light of the 
     thousands of veterans who depend on the center for care.
       Fred Malphurs, director of the North Florida-South Georgia 
     Veterans Health System, was clearly not enthusiastic about 
     complying with the directive to identify cuts. ``The benefits 
     would be, in my opinion, marginal at best,'' he told The Sun 
     last week.
       Whatever the perceived ``benefits'' of closing down or 
     drastically cutting back on Lake City's services, the impact 
     on area veterans would be negative to the extreme. It also 
     seems a bitter pill for veterans to have to swallow at a time 
     when thousands of area reservists and regular military 
     personnel (read future veterans) are still risking their 
     lives and their health fighting a war half a world away.
       Nationally, the VA does have a problem with underutilized 
     facilities. We just have a difficult time believing that Lake 
     City's VA center is one of them.
       Florida is a magnet for retirees, many of them veterans of 
     past conflicts. We would think that if anything, the demand 
     for veterans medical services is rising, not falling, in the 
     Sunshine State.
       As North Florida becomes a more desirable destination for 
     retiree vets, demand for care at the Lake City VA center is 
     only going to grow.

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