Save Our Health Care System

Floor Speech

Mr. MORAN of Kansas. Madam Speaker, it is easy to be in Washington, DC, making bold predictions and promises and then ignore the realities right in front of our noses. Congress' failure to meet the July 1 deadline to prevent the scheduled fee reductions for Medicare providers is shameful and our failure to act has real consequences.

Seventeen percent of the people I represent are on Medicare, roughly 114,000 people. Many of these citizens live in communities where there are few doctors and few health care options. If the available doctors stop seeing Medicare patients, the health care access for all Kansans will be severely damaged. We must prevent the scheduled physician fee reductions from going into effect, and I encourage the Senate to take up necessary legislation now.

Just this week, I received a letter from a family physician back home. He, of course, expressed his frustration with our current Medicare system. Here are his words:

``It is with mixed emotion that I am writing to inform you of my intent to leave my family medicine practice. I have reached the point where I am no longer willing to expose myself or my family to the risk of having to rely upon an increasingly unreliable and poor source of income, Medicare. As a small business with 12 employees, I don't have the margin to absorb others' incompetence or our government's capricious reimbursement. I am not willing to be a pawn in an ideological chess match in Washington, and therefore as of today I will no longer accept Medicare patients.

``I am considering a position in an economically booming region in another State that is nearly 95 percent private pay. What physician worth their salt will continue in a system that undervalues the work they do for a patient population that is the most complex and the most time demanding?

``Congress and the Medicare system are taking advantage of good-intentioned physicians who are more interested in caring for patients and upholding and honoring the Hippocratic Oath than lining their pockets. Even now, writing this letter to you, I feel a sense of guilt as though I am betraying my Medicare patients. I have realized, however, that it is not I that have betrayed the elderly, rather Congress.''

When doctors close their practices, it creates a gap that is almost impossible for us in rural communities to fill. Congress must understand that we have a responsibility in making physicians want to continue to practice medicine, to not give them the reason to walk out their clinic or hospital doors and never look back. Congress needs to look closely at our role in these trends and make sure we are not encouraging this situation by playing politics with people's health care and their lives.

I hope that the Senate will pass legislation this week that can keep our vital health care system in place and protect our most vulnerable citizens.

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