August 18, 1999

(Houston)--U.S. Representative Ken Bentsen (D-TX) visited Hermann Hospital today to urge support for a bill he recently introduced that would guarantee a fairer formula for medical education.

"Hermann Hospital provides a perfect example of how unfair the current Medicare reimbursement formulas are," Congressman Bentsen said. "Hermann here in Houston receives $6,924 per resident while Beth Israel Medical Hospital in New York City receives $57,000 annually for the same medical student. This disparity must be eliminated."

"We must level the playing field for Hermann and other hospitals in order to ensure fairness and quality patient care," congressman Bentsen said.

The legislation that Bentsen is sponsoring along with Rep. Ben Cardin of Maryland would correct the funding inequity. The bill is called the All-Payer Graduate Medical Education Act (HR 1224). "Our legislation would replace the current system with a fair, national system based upon actual resident salaries and fringe benefits and adjusting them for area wage indices and changes in the consumer price index," Congressman Bentsen said. "This legislation would also more fairly compensate those hospitals which treat the sickest Medicare patients, rather than the largest number of Medicare patients."

"This legislation would require all health plans to help contribute towards the cost of graduate medical education, creating a $4.1 billion trust fund for teaching programs," Bentsen added. "All health plans benefit from our teaching programs, however, all plans do not currently help pay for these costs.

Congressman Bentsen stressed the importance of this legislation not only to Hermann but to all teaching hospitals. "Teaching hospitals are the lynchpin of our health care system," he said. "They train physicians, they conduct cutting-edge research on new procedures and therapies, and they serve a disproportionate share of uninsured patients. In our current managed care health system, private health plans are no longer willing to pay higher prices to subsidize these services. Without these subsidies, teaching hospitals are facing increasing financial pressures."

Today's disparities in Medicare reimbursements was created in 1984 when Congress passed legislation to reform the Graduate Medical Education portion of Medicare. This formula includes a reimbursement for a hospital's specific costs. "When this formula was implemented, certain hospitals were able to include specific costs, such as faculty supervision, while others were not," Congressman Bentsen explained "This resulted in dramatic disparities."

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