To amend title 38, United States Code, to enhance the authority of the Department of Veterans Affairs to recover from third parties costs of medical care furnished to veterans and other persons by the Department.

Mr. Speaker, along with Mr. Evans of Illinois, the Committee's Ranking Member, I am introducing a bill to strengthen the Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA's) rights under law to recover the costs of providing medical care to veterans and other persons from certain third parties. A number of public health plans either refuse to reimburse VA, or are prohibited from doing so by current law. This bill would correct this problem by eliminating barriers to reimbursement for VA care. It is identical to a bill I introduced in the 107th Congress, H.R. 5530. That bill was referred exclusively to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

H.R. 1715 is based upon the simple principle that acknowledges when VA provides medical care to an insured or Medicare-eligible veteran, VA should receive payment for the services it provides. This principle is not new. Since 1986, VA has had statutory authority to collect from traditional insurers such as Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Aetna, Mutual of Omaha and many others. These funds are used by VA to supplement appropriated funds to maintain high quality health care. VA also collects from so called ``Medi-gap policies'' that are an important adjunct to the Medicare program.

But VA is unable to collect from the massive managed care sector, accounting now for over two-thirds of all health plans in the United States, including the managed care plans within Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan. Nor can VA collect from the Medicare program. RAND Corporation has estimated that over 2 million Medicare-eligible veterans were enrolled in VA health care in fiscal year 2000, with that number increasing each fiscal year since then.

My legislation would require these federal programs to pay VA for care it provides to covered beneficiaries. This would increase the amount of money VA could collect by hundreds of millions of dollars each year--providing funds that are desperately needed to reduce these intolerable waiting lists and promote better use of all available health care resources.

This legislation will not limit the choices available to veterans in Medicare or any other federal health care plan, and I do believe it will create a modest incentive for veterans to remain enrolled in the VA rather than move back and forth between systems as they do now. This bill will also provide an important supplement to the VA health care system for the services it renders in caring for many of our nation's heroes.

I urge my colleagues to support this common-sense approach to improving veterans' health care, reducing waiting times for VA health care, and helping Medicare-eligible and other federally insured veterans gain better health care coverage from the Department of Veterans Affairs.