Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010
Floor Speech
Medicare and Medicaid Extenders Act of 2010
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Thank you very much for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill but with real dismay.
First, it is ludicrous that Congress continues to pass the SGR instead of to fix it once and for all. This bill, though necessary, doesn't fix what is broken, and we will just find ourselves back here again next year, trying to find a way forward. It is time to ``repeal and replace'' the doctor payment formula and to come up with something new.
Second, this bill contains special ``pork'' favors for certain Midwest Senators which will pay their doctors more than the doctors in other parts of the country--in particular, my State of California.
Section 103 of this bill provides an arbitrary ``floor'' for certain doctors' payments in Iowa and in other Midwest States that will boost their Medicare reimbursements, but this provision does not extend to all doctors in the United States. Iowa will get an additional $17 million in FY 2011, on top of regular Medicare reimbursements, which other States will not get. Over the 2-year cycle of FY 2010-2011, Iowa doctors will be reimbursed over $34 million because of this special ``floor'' in payments inserted by Senator Grassley and by others in that body.
In a bill that is supposed to be ``clean'' and that is supposed to simply advance a moratorium on reductions in the sustained growth rate, section 103 is an abomination. It is plain unfair to doctors in other States.
My doctors in California and especially in my district have suffered for more than a decade under a misaligned doctor payment formula due to outdated geographic locality designations. Despite numerous government reports by the GAO and CMS and despite numerous times that the House has passed legislation to fix this problem, the Senate has refused to accept the fix in favor of tipping the scales in order to satisfy Senator Grassley's whims.
If Congress really wants to do right by doctors, it needs to do right by all doctors. This bill does not do that.
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