Preventing Across-The-Board Direct Spending Cuts

Floor Speech

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. If we are quiet, we will be quick.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and help ensure that our Nation's hospitals, nursing homes, physicians, and other healthcare providers have the support they need to get through the COVID-19 pandemic.

This substitute amendment that Senator Collins and I are offering is a compromise that delays the Medicare payment cuts through December 31 and ensures that the cost of this delay is paid for.

I hope you will support it.

Senator Collins.

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Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together and help ensure that our Nation's hospitals, nursing homes, physicians, and other healthcare providers have the financial support they need to get through the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 25, 2020, this body came together and passed the CARES Act, by a 96-0 vote--exactly 1 year ago today.

The CARES Act helped to provide the resources needed to ramp up testing and vaccine development, ensure that small businesses would have support to continue to pay their workers, and provide much-needed financial relief for healthcare providers on the frontlines of this pandemic.

A year later, we can start to see the light at the end of the very long tunnel that is this public health crisis. More than 100 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across the country. And we are starting to see job growth as more companies start hiring again.

However, with hundreds of millions of Americans still needing to be vaccinated and the threat of COVID-19 variants still looming, we need to continue to support our frontline healthcare providers and help keep them financially strong for the months ahead.

That is why Senator Collins and I came together to introduce the Medicare Sequester Relief Act, a bill that would suspend the 2 percent Medicare payment cuts that are scheduled to hit healthcare providers starting on April 1.

As a result of the CARES Act and through subsequent relief measures, these payment cuts have been suspended through March 31, and they need to be suspended again.

With American hospitals and nursing homes projecting tens of billions of dollars in additional financial losses this year due to the COVID-19 crisis, we need to continue to avert these Medicare payment cuts until we are further past the worst of the pandemic.

The substitute amendment that Senator Collins and I are offering today is a reasonable compromise. It delays the Medicare payment cuts through December 31. And it ensures that the cost of this delay is paid for, so that we do not increase the Federal budget deficit.

This week, I heard from Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover, NH.

They highlighted that this legislation would result in $2.1 million in desperately needed additional revenue for the hospital.

The hospital's chief financial officer, Peter Walcek told me: ``These are real dollars supporting our organization's recovery from tens of millions in lost revenue and added costs during the pandemic. . . . By passing a continued moratorium through 2021, Wentworth-Douglass will be in a better place to care for those in need and respond to any future crisis affecting the health of our community.''

I also heard about the importance of Medicare sequester relief for New Hampshire nursing homes. Patricia Ramsey, from the Edgewood Centre nursing facility in Portsmouth, NH, said ``the Medicare sequestration suspension, although not a cure, will help us mitigate the added operating expenses and losses we continue to experience, especially with the exacerbated workforce shortage.''

I have heard stories like these from so many healthcare providers across New Hampshire, and I believe there are healthcare providers in each of our communities that would share similar stories.

We need to provide them with more financial support so that they can be there to care for patients, as we continue to make progress in combating this pandemic.

We cannot allow our hospitals and healthcare providers to go under as we fight through the worst public health crisis of our lifetimes.

I urge my colleagues to come together again, like we did in the CARES Act, and support this legislation when it comes up for a vote today.

Thank you.

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