Letter: To John Spratt, Chairman House Budget Committee, & Paul Ryan, Ranking Member House Budget Committee

Letter

Dear Chairman Spratt and Ranking Member Ryan:

Weare writing to express our support for including provisions in the FY08 Budget Resolution to strengthen the Medicare program for seniors and protect access to hospital care for Medicaid beneficiaries.

Specifically, we urge the Committee to demonstrate its commitment to the Medicare and Medicaid programs and the seniors, disabled and children served by those programs, by opposing hospital cuts in the FY08 Budget Resolution. The nation's full service community hospitals, which serve as the health care safety net for so many vulnerable citizens, are under large and growing cost pressures. Rising numbers of uninsured, new and costly pharmaceuticals and technologies, labor shortages, and preparing for pandemics and terrorist threats are just some of the many pressures hospitals face and which our communities expect hospitals to address.

And yet, Federal payments are not keeping pace with the costs of responding to these challenges. Earlier this month, Congress' independent, nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedP AC) reported that Medicare payments are falling further and further below the minimal costs of care for our seniors. MedP AC estimates Medicare hospital operating margins of negative 3.1 percent in 2005 and projects that those margins will fall to negative 5.4 percent.

Source