Bernie,
If asked, I would play for any of the vets places for free. In the Dallas area the places are being bought by major Corps who are doing their best to increase the bottom line. Two of my long time venues have had budget cuts allowing only paid entertainment of any kind once monthly. What this has meant to me is once I had as many bookings as I could play with only 22 clients. Today it is taking 80 plus clients to get the same amount of work. It is not only entertainment that takes a hit. At a lot of my venues the Corps have also cut staffing while at the same time increasing the fees they charge the residents.
Texas does a pretty good job of monitoring the senior homes and I don't see how all this is going unnoticed.

Deane