Friends of VA Letter to House and Senate VA, HUD and Independent
Agencies Appropriations Subcommittees Regarding FY 2000 Appropriations
July 15, 1999
The Honorable James Walsh
Chairman, Subcommittee on VA, HUD and Independent Agencies
Committee on Appropriations
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515
Dear Mr. Chairman:
On behalf of the Friends of VA Medical Care and Health Research
Coalition, we write to ask you to maintain the viability of
the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) medical and prosthetics
research program despite what we all recognize is a very difficult
fiscal year 2000 appropriations outlook. As your Subcommittee
develops the FY 2000 appropriations legislation, we hope that
you will recognize the importance of both the VA medical
care and medical research program. We understand that the
coming months will be difficult due to the limited allocation
for the VA, HUD legislation but we hope that your Subcommittee
recognizes the significance of providing an adequate increase
to both VA medical care and the VA medical research programs.
The Coalition is recommending a budget of $360 million to
the VA medical research program in FY 2000.
As you know, the VA medical research program plays a key
role in physician recruiting and retaining talented young
physicians to the VA health care system, greatly improving
the qualty of care to our nation's veterans. Unfortunately,
if the VA medical research program is flat lined in FY 2000,
the program will be forced to take extreme measures in order
to absorb an estimated $26 million in increased costs. These
increased costs result from the January 2000 federal pay increase,
implementation of new research oversight programs, biomedical
research inflation, and out-year obligations of $10 million
for multi-year medical research projects. The VA medical research
program will not be able to implement new research programs
in priority areas such as hepatitis, Parkinson's disease,
mental health, and prostate cancer. Finally, the VA will
be forced to cut individual grants by at least 5%. As you
can see, the VA medical research program will face some difficult
challenges without an increase in funding.
We strongly encourage you and your VA-HUD subcommittee colleagues
to provide additional funding to both the VA medical care
and medical research programs. Additional funding would enable
these programs to better meet the needs of our nation's veterans.
If additional funds are made available to your Subcommittee,
we hope that you will allocate $360 million to the VA medical
research program in FY 2000.
Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
Gary Ewart
American Lung Association
Hilary Wilson
American Psychiatric Association
Jonathan Fishburn
Association of American Medical Colleges
Jeff Coughlin
Association of Professors of Medicine
Larry Soler
Juvenile Diabetes Foundation International
Michele Sumilas
American Federation for Medical Research
Barbara West
National Association of Veterans' Research and Education Foundations
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