Copyright 1999 Newsday, Inc.
Newsday (New York, NY)
November 3, 1999, Wednesday NASSAU AND
SUFFOLK EDITION
SECTION: VIEWPOINTS; Page A46
LENGTH: 365 words
HEADLINE:
EDITORIAL / FIRST AID / MEDICARE CUTS INJURED NY TEACHING HOSPITALS. CONGRESS
MUST STOP THE BLEEDING.
BODY:
Plans in Congress to
fine-tune the Medicare cost-control measures that overshot the mark are good
news for New York's teaching hospitals. The hospitals have taken a potentially
debilitating hit.
Committees in the House and Senate have approved
proposals that would drive billions of additional dollars to hospitals, nursing
homes and other medical providers. But the Senate version, while less costly
annually, would provide more for hospitals and avoid the House version's kind of
sweeping changes in payment formulas that would create new losers, many of them
in New York. Before Congress undertakes any major change in policy, beyond
short-term adjustments, it needs to order a comprehensive study of rate
inequities between regions and institutions, to avoid disruptive changes.
New York's teaching hospitals are a valuable national and local
resource. They train 15 percent of the country's interns and medical residents,
support cutting-edge clinical research and provide a disproportionate share of
care for the indigent. Now they are in a bind. Squeezed between aggressive,
cost-conscious managed-care companies and Medicare cutbacks, their bottom lines
have taken a beating.
When Congress passed the Balanced Budget Act of
1997, it intended to slow Medicare's rate of spending growth by $ 115 billion
over five years. But one unintended result has been an absolute reduction in the
amount paid to teaching hospitals.
If the present policy is allowed to
play out unaltered through 2002, many of those hospitals would be driven into
the red.
The House plan would restore $ 10 billion in Medicare spending
over five years, with $ 400 million going to teaching hospitals. The Senate
plan, developed by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) and Sen. William Roth
(R-Del.), would restore $ 12 billion over 10 years, including $ 1.8 billion in
the next four years for hospitals that train new doctors.
The best
long-range cure for teaching hospitals is a stable stream of revenue dedicated
to graduate medical education; that's what future policy should
be designed to achieve. But first, Congress needs to stop the bleeding by
passing the Senate's legislation.
LOAD-DATE: November
4, 1999 
