I 
108TH CONGRESS 
2D SESSION 
H. R. 4399
To establish certain conditions on the Secretary of Veterans Affairs imple-
menting any recommendation of the CARES Commission that would 
have the effect of eliminating or severely reducing any medical service 
provided to veterans throughout the United States at Department of 
Veterans Affairs medical facilities. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MAY 19, 2004
Mrs. KELLY introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs 
A BILL 
To establish certain conditions on the Secretary of Veterans 
Affairs implementing any recommendation of the CARES 
Commission that would have the effect of eliminating 
or severely reducing any medical service provided to vet-
erans throughout the United States at Department of 
Veterans Affairs medical facilities.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Securing Access to 
Vital Entitlements for U.S. Veterans Act’’ or the ‘‘SAVE 
US VETS Act’’.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
Congress makes the following findings: 
(1) Veterans have sacrificed tremendously on 
behalf of their Nation and deserve the best quality 
health care and benefits that were promised to them 
by their country. 
(2) The Veterans Equitable Resource Allocation 
(VERA) formula, established by the Department of 
Veterans Affairs pursuant to section 429 of the fis-
cal year 1997 VA/HUD appropriations Act (Public 
Law 104–204; 110 Stat. 2929), has proved to be an 
ineffective means of allocating veterans medical care 
dollars fairly across the 22 national service regions, 
known as Veterans Integrated Service Networks 
(VISNs), of the Department of Veterans Affairs. 
(3) A study by the General Accounting Office 
released in February 2002 found weaknesses in the 
Department’s implementation of VERA, such as the 
omission of about 20 percent of VA’s workload in 
formulating each network’s allocation and VERA’s 
lack of accounting for the cost of differences among 
networks resulting from variation in their patients’ 
health care needs as well as it could, which ‘‘com-
promise VERA’s ability to allocate comparable re-
sources for comparable workloads’’.
(4) The same General Accounting Office study 
found that failure to implement the General Ac-
counting Office’s recommendations has resulted in 
the misallocation of $200,000,000 annually by the 
Department and $920,000,000 that would otherwise 
have been awarded to veterans health care facilities 
in the northeast and was instead granted to the 
south and southwest. 
(5) In May of 2004, the Secretary of Veterans 
Affairs announced the Secretary’s decision with re-
spect to implementation of recommendations of the 
commission established by the Secretary on Decem-
ber 22, 2003, known as the Department of Veterans 
Affairs Capital Asset Realignment for Enhanced 
Services Commission (or the CARES Commission). 
(6) That May 2004 decision of the Secretary of 
Veterans Affairs would diminish veterans’ health 
care options by breaking promises and pushing de-
serving veterans away from the veterans health fa-
cilities designed and built to provide care and treat-
ment to the veterans who have suffered on the bat-
tlefield. 
(7) The CARES Commission failed to include 
mental health as part of its criteria during its com-
pletion of its February 2004 report to the Secretary 
of Veterans Affairs. 
(8) The May 2004 decision of the Secretary of 
Veterans Affairs to move acute and long-term psy-
chiatry beds, without proper and sufficient data on 
mental health of the affected veterans, is premature 
and ill-conceived. 
(9) The consolidation of services, closing of hos-
pitals, and removal of services, which the Secretary 
of Veterans Affairs claims will ‘‘enhance patient 
care’’, will only worsen and decrease services avail-
able to the Nation’s veterans.
SEC. 3. LIMITATION ON THE SECRETARY OF VETERANS AF-
FAIRS 
IMPLEMENTING 
CERTAIN 
REC-
OMMENDATIONS OF THE CARES COMMIS-
SION. 
(a) LIMITATION.—The Secretary of Veterans Affairs 
may not implement any recommendation of the CARES 
Commission described in subsection (b) until the health 
care funding allocation system for the Veterans Health 
Administration in effect on the date of the enactment of 
this Act, known as VERA (Veterans Equitable Resource 
Allocation), is replaced with a new, more equitable formula 
for the allocation of funds appropriated to the Department 
of Veterans Affairs.
(b) COVERED RECOMMENDATIONS.—This section ap-
plies to any recommendation of the CARES Commission 
that is contained in the report of that commission dated 
February 2004 and that would have the effect of elimi-
nating or severely reducing a medical service provided to 
veterans throughout the United States at Department of 
Veterans Affairs medical facilities. 
(c) CARES COMMISSION.—In this section, the term 
‘‘CARES Commission’’ means the commission established 
by the Secretary on December 22, 2003, known as the 
Department of Veterans Affairs Capital Asset Realign-
ment for Enhanced Services Commission.
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