Excerpt from Status of the Reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration and Related Initiatives to Improve Va Health Care Delivery Methods: Hearing Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Appropriations, United States Senate One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session; Special Hearing, Department of Veterans Affairs, General Accounting Office, Nondepartmental Witnesses The subcommittee met at 9:03 a.m., in room SD-192, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Christopher S. Bond (chairman) presiding. Present: Senators Bond, Burns, Bennett, and Mikulski. Department Of Veterans Affairs Statement Of Dr. Kenneth Kizer, Under Secretary For Health Statement Of Christopher S. Bond Senator Bond. We call this hearing to order. The subcommittee meets to receive an assessment of the recent reorganization of the Veterans Health Administration, and other initiatives to move the VA medical system forward toward a modem, cost-effective, high-quality health care delivery system. Over the past year my colleagues and I have been under siege by the Secretary of the VA for trimming some of the increases in the VA medical care budget for fiscal year 1996. The Secretary has issued scores of press releases, made speeches around the country, sent out e-mail messages to VA employees, and has written newspaper editorials decrying the mean-spiritedness and the frontal attacks of the Republican budget. What the Secretary has refused to acknowledge, however, is that congressional actions have been based on recommendations made over several years by the VA's inspector general, the General Accounting Office, and even VA officials, that, if implemented, would result in hundreds of millions of dollars of cost savings without reducing patient care services. Some of you may know that I wrote to Secretary Brown last year asking for VA's plans to prepare for the budgetary constraints, in view of the severe limitations on domestic discretionary spending we face this year, and for the next 6 years as we move toward a balanced Federal budget that at least everybody announces in principle that they are for. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.