November 30, 1999

(Houston)--Congressman Ken Bentsen (D-Houston) today announced 4 major health care initiatives that were signed into law Monday that will benefit minorities, chronically under-served patients, and the entire Texas Medical Center community.

"The health care legislation we pushed through at the close of the 106th Congress will have significant impact on our local community in the Greater Houston area," Congressman Bentsen said. "The final budget signed into law by the President yesterday (Monday) will mean more cutting edge research to save lives and find new treatments and cures to help stop the devastation of cancer and other diseases in our society."

"In a country as great as ours--with the top resources and talent in the world--it is our responsibility to seek better treatments and to find cures for those who suffer, especially for minorities and underserved patients who are disproportionately affected," Congressman Bentsen said.

"First, this budget finally rids us of the unfair Medicare funding system for physician residency training that shortchanged the teaching hospitals at the Texas Medical Center," Congressman Bentsen announced. "The provisions in the bill, that are based on legislation I sponsored, (H.R. 1224), were enacted to correct an inequity in the law that allowed some hospitals, such as those in New York City, to be reimbursed seven times the rate of teaching hospitals at the Texas Medical Center."

"Under this new funding formula, the physcian resident payments to all hospitals will be bumped up to at least 70% of the national average, and adjusted annually for inflation," Congressman Bentsen said. "With a more equitable funding system in place, hospitals at the Texas Medical Center can continue to provide the most innovative research and treatments."

Additionally, the new law now provides an Indirect Medical Education reimbursement of 6.5% in Fiscal Year 2000, 6.25% in FY 2001 and 5.5% thereafter. Under the old law, the Indirect Medical Education reimbursement would have been reduced to 5.5%. The change will mean a savings of $700 million for the nation's hospitals over the next five years.

"Another Medicare provision based upon legislation I introduced, (H.R. 1483), will provide increased graduate medical education funding for nursing and other health care professional training conducted at our nation's teaching hospitals," Congressman Bentsen said. "Under existing law, teaching hospitals are reimbursed based on the number of Medicare patients seen at their hospitals. With the introduction of Medicare managed care plans, many of these patients are no longer seen at these hospitals. As a result, Medicare reimbursements for these health professional programs have decreased. This provision restores this critical funding."

"The Medical Education provisions I have just described--the new funding system for our physician residents at our teaching hospitals at Houston's Texas Medical Center, the Medicare reimbursements for our teaching hospitals, and the increased funding for our nurses at our teaching hospitals-- is of benefit to us all," Congressman Bentsen said. "It ensures that our hospitals will be able to continue to provide cutting edge research and treatments, and serve a mostly urban community in which a disproportionate number of the under-served and the uninsured live."

The second important health care provision that the new law provides is an increase in the budget for the National Institutes of Health, or the NIH. "Specifically, it provides $17.9 billion, or $2.3 billion more for biomedical research," Congressman Bentsen said. "This fifteen percent increase is the second down payment on our efforts to double the NIH's budget over five years. This increase is necessary to ensure adequate funding for cutting-edge research such as the Human Genome Project being conducted at Baylor College of Medicine in my district, and the ovarian cancer research being conducted at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center which recently received a five-year $10 million SPORE grant from the National Cancer Institute. Currently, NIH funds only one in three of peer-reviewed medical research grants and many potential cures and treatments go undiscovered. "

The third important health care victory in the final spending package for the local community is $500,000 in federal funding to save lives among minority and medically under-served populations. Specifically, the half a million dollars will go to fund the University of Texas M.D. Anderson project to establish a Center of Excellence for Research on Minority Health (CERMH).

"The goal of this Center would be to improve the low survival rates and save lives among minority and medically under-served populations," Congressman Bentsen said. "This legislation is a first step toward addressing the fact that our health care system is not adequately serving minority and medically under-served patients."

"The Institute of Medicine reported earlier this year that there is a disproportionate share of minority and medically under-served patients who suffer from cancer and other health-related diseases," Congressman Bentsen said. "These federal funds would establish a multidisciplinary center for excellence in basic, applied, and clinical research to help meet the unique health-related challenges of minority and under-served populations."

Dr. Lovell Jones, professor and director of experimental gynecology endocrinology at the UT M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, explained that CREMH would work with the Cancer Center and the surrounding under-served and minority populations in the metropolitan Houston area to develop a model program in minority health research. "The population of Houston can serve as a model --it is comprised of several ethnic groups, including African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans, which are all populations that are suffering disproportionately," said Dr. Jones, who will serve as the new director of the Center. "This center will allow us to address health issues that will benefit the rest of the nation as well."

Finally, the fourth important health care provision signed into law yesterday as part of our final budget, is the progress made to establish a bi-national breast cancer research coordinating center in Texas and Israel. "Language we worked to include in the bill expresses congressional intent to eventually fund the proposed center," Congressman Bentsen said.

"In 1995 scientists found that one out of every 100 women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent carry a mutation that predisposes them to breast and ovarian cancers," Congressman Bentsen said. "Funding for the Bi-National Ashkenazi Jewish Research Coordinating Center is vital to improve prevention, early detection, and treatment of breast cancer and ovarian cancer for all women."

The center would conduct and coordinate valuable biomedical research about breast and ovarian cancer which is prevalent in Ashkenazi Jews. Under the management of the Texas Hadassah Medical Research Foundation (THMRF), based at Baylor College of Medicine, the center will have a counterpart located at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Israel and each will serve as the point of coordination for various clinical and research institutions in the Texas medical Center and Israel.

"The proposed Bi-National Ashkenazi Jewish Research Coordinating Center would work in conjunction with the Texas Hadassah Medical Research Foundation to coordinate U.S./Israeli research activities," Congressman Bentsen said. "The center will require a one-time developmental budget of $5 million to fund establishment of a computerized data and specimen-sharing system, subject recruitment and retention programs, and collaborative pilot research projects."

THMRF founding member Dr. Armin Weinberg praised the progress being made to bring attention to the life-saving effort begun by Texas Hadassah to establish a Bi-National Research Center. "The epidemiological research required to adequately address the unanswered questions about the disease in Ashkenazi women can best be effectively conducted only through a bi-national effort," Dr. Weinberg said.

"Taken as a whole--the funding for medical education, the NIH, the minority health center and the Hadassah research center-- the final budget represents a huge victory for our patients and health care providers in our community," Congressman Bentsen said.

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