I 
108TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 2379
To amend title 38, United States Code, to improve access to health care 
for rural veterans, and for other purposes. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JUNE 5, 2003
Mr. OSBORNE introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Veterans’ Affairs 
A BILL 
To amend title 38, United States Code, to improve access 
to health care for rural veterans, and for other purposes.
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 ‘‘Rural Veterans Access 
to Care Act of 2003’’. 
SEC. 2. IMPROVED ACCESS TO HEALTH CARE FOR RURAL 
VETERANS. 
(a) IN GENERAL.—(1) Chapter 17 of title 38, United 
States Code, is amended by adding at the end the fol-
lowing new section:
‘‘§ 1730A. Access to care for rural veterans 
‘‘(a) The Secretary shall ensure that funds allocated 
pursuant to subsection (b) are used in accordance with 
that subsection to improve access to medical services for 
highly rural or geographically remote veterans by using 
the contract authority of section 1703 of this title and 
other authorities available to the Secretary to improve 
such access to care. 
‘‘(b)(1) The Secretary shall provide that, of the 
amounts made available for any fiscal year for the Medical 
Care appropriation for the Department, not less than 5 
percent shall be available only for treatment of veterans 
described in subsection (c) for—
‘‘(A) acute or chronic symptom management; 
‘‘(B) nontherapeutic medical services; and 
‘‘(C) other medical services as determined ap-
propriate in the case of any veteran by the director 
of the appropriate geographic service region of the 
Department, after consultation with the Department 
physician responsible for primary care of the vet-
eran. 
‘‘(2) In the allocation of such percentage of funds to 
geographic service regions of the Department, such funds 
for any fiscal year shall initially be allocated in an iden-
tical percentage to each such service region. However, 
upon a determination by the Secretary that a particular
service region will not use all of the funds so allocated 
for a fiscal year for highly rural or geographically remote 
veterans, the Secretary shall reallocate those funds to one 
or more other service regions, to be available only for 
treatment of veterans described in subsection (c) for pur-
poses described in paragraph (1). 
‘‘(c) Veterans referred to in subsection (b)(1) as de-
scribed in this subsection are veterans—
‘‘(1) who are enrolled in the veterans health 
care system under section 1705 of this title or have 
a service-connected disability; and 
‘‘(2) who, pursuant to subsection (e), are con-
sidered to be highly rural or geographically remote 
veterans. 
‘‘(d) After the end of the third fiscal year during 
which this section is in effect, the Secretary shall review 
the operation of this section and, if the Secretary deter-
mines that an adjustment in the percentage in effect 
under subsection (b)(1) is necessary, shall recommend to 
Congress an adjustment to such percentage. The Sec-
retary shall include with any such recommendation a rec-
ommendation as to whether the Secretary should have the 
authority to apply the overall percentage through the use 
of different percentages for the various geographic service 
regions of the Department.