Copyright 2000 The Columbus Dispatch
The Columbus
Dispatch
December 20, 2000, Wednesday
SECTION: EDITORIAL & COMMENT, Pg. 10A
LENGTH: 444 words
HEADLINE:
GRADUATE EDUCATION
BODY:
Congress last week
came closer to correcting a budgetary gaffe when it included $ 235 million in a
larger spending bill for graduate medical- education programs
at children's hospitals. Several central Ohio legislators earned kudos for their
persistence in getting the funding approved.
Independent children's
hospitals across the country, including Children's Hospital in Columbus, have
long helped train medical students at their institutions but received no federal
assistance as do their counterparts at general medical
facilities. The omission, tolerated too long, occurred because the federal
government's graduate medical-education dollars flow through
the Medicare program for the elderly. Because no elderly patients are found at
children's hospitals, neither was Medicare money. The funding quirk was not a
purposeful slight to independent children's medical facilities but did represent
the political reality that children -- too young to vote or stump for their own
cause -- often are at the short end of government programs and attention.
Congress started correcting the quirk last year with the relatively
small sum of $ 40 million, $ 4.5 million of which went to Ohio's independent
children's hospitals. The money is especially important to the state's seven
children's hospitals. In some states, such as New York, children's hospitals are
part of adult hospitals and, therefore, qualified for funding. Ohio's children's
hospitals developed as independent institutions and, thus, weren't
Medicare-eligible.
Though the first-year amount was small, it signalled
forward motion. This year's $ 235 million means that children's hospitals will
get 80 percent of the funding for graduate medical education
that other teaching hospitals receive. Children's Hospital of Columbus' share is
estimated at $ 5 million to $ 6 million.
Republican Ohio Sen. Mike
DeWine and Reps. John R. Kasich and Deborah Pryce championed the issue and
became the voices on Capitol Hill that children did not have.
Kasich,
the outgoing Republican from Westerville, and Pryce, the Perry Township
Republican, worked with House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., to get the
measure included in the education, health and labor spending bill.
Rep.
Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Lorain in northeast Ohio, led his party's push
for the funding.
The funding quirk will not be fully fixed, though,
until parity exists in graduate medical-education funding. That
goal will require DeWine, Pryce and others to continue advocating for highly
skilled pediatric medical personnel whose training is best polished at
children's hospitals. No ailing child deserves less.
GRAPHIC: Phot
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