Hospital Debt Tops Agenda as Hospital Association Visits Capitol Hill

With the uninsured population rising and healthcare debt reaching record levels, members of the American Hospital Association are on Capitol Hill today reiterating their top priorities to federal lawmakers.

The visits come on the heels of the AHA’s 39th annual membership meeting, which was held earlier this week in Washington, D.C. Alicia Mitchell, the AHA’s vice president of media relations, said members heard from several lawmakers, including Republican Senator Dave Camp of Michigan, and Democrat Congressman Steny Hoyer of Maryland, during the regular meeting. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also made an appearance.

Discussions touched on a variety of subjects, including ways health care professionals can work with lawmakers to improve healthcare, to the role healthcare will play in the upcoming presidential election. But the issues members will focus most on when they wrap up their two-day visit to Capitol Hill are the scheduled cuts to Medicaid, Medicare cuts for physician payments and physician self-referral to specialty hospitals, Mitchell said.

AHA wants Congress to block the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ new rules that would tighten Medicaid funding in several areas, impacting both hospitals and poor and disabled patients. The new rules, scheduled to take affect in late May, would also impact funding at the state level. The AHA members are also fighting a reduction in certain Medicare payments to physicians that is scheduled to take effect in June

Industry experts say any cuts in Medicare and Medicaid programs would add to the industry’s ever increasing uncompensated care expenses.  According to the AHA, the industry provided $31.2 billion in uncompensated care in 2006, the last year for which figures are available. That’s up from $19 billion in 1998.  The AHA defines uncompensated care as a mixture of charity care and other care for which payment was expected but not received.

Medicare and Medicaid are essential to hospital margins as 55 percent of the patients at a typical hospital are covered by one of the federal programs, according to the AHA.

AHA members would also like the lawmakers to ban physicians from referring patients to hospitals that they have ownership in. Richard Pollack, the AHA’s executive vice president for public policy told Forbes.com that specialty hospitals are “ripping another hole in the safety net,” of healthcare.

But Molly Sandvig, executive director of Physician Hospitals of America said there’s no evidence of physician owned hospitals financially harming corporate or not-for-profit hospitals. In fact, she cited a recent The Wall Street Journal article that showed not-for-profit hospitals are performing better than for-profit hospitals (“Profits at Not-for-Profit Hospitals Put Industry in the Spotlight,” April 4).

“Tax-exempt hospitals are swimming in dough and complaining about not making enough money to care for patients,” Sandvig said. “Their entire case is complete rhetoric and not based in fact.” 

Nonetheless, the health care professional should get a good reception on Capitol Hill. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington, D.C.-based research group, health professionals are ranked fifth in total campaign giving when compared with more than 80 other industries. Health care professionals have donated more than $34.4 million to lawmakers so far this year, and more than $395 million to lawmakers since 1990, according to the Center.