WASHINGTON, May 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Lobbyists representing
corporate hospitals operated by non-physician bureaucrats have launched
their latest attack on hospitals owned and operated by Physicians.
After failing twice before in their efforts to limit Medicare
beneficiaries' choice of hospitals by shutting down physician owned
hospitals, the lobbyists are now swarming the Senate Appropriations
Committee, which is considering a supplemental appropriations bill that
would provide funds for current military operations and expand some GI
benefits.
"Their plan is to convince the Appropriations Committee, which includes
some of the Senate's most distinguished members, to block Medicare
recipients from having access to some of the best hospitals in the
country," says Molly Sandvig, Executive Director of Physician Hospitals of
America (PHA). "The big box hospital lobby has been shameless in its
efforts to kill any form of competition that might offer Medicare
beneficiaries a choice in where they obtain medical care. First, they tried
to create controversy in a much-needed bill to improve insurance benefits
for people with mental illness. Failing there, they went after the farm
bill and tried to justify closing physician owned hospitals as a way to pay
for farm programs. Now they are attempting to use legislation that supports
our men and women in the military."
PHA is confident that the Senators on the Appropriations Committee will
see through this lobbying ploy, and reject this ill-advised attempt to
insert a major change in Medicare policy into a defense-spending bill. Even
the leading Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, Charles Grassley of
Iowa, has rejected this effort to bypass the jurisdiction of the Finance
Committee.
"PHA and Senator Grassley often disagree on physician ownership of
hospitals, but we are of one mind on this point," Sandvig added. "The
debate over hospital choice for Medicare beneficiaries belongs in the
Finance Committee, where the issues can be openly and fairly discussed.
This is too important an issue for Medicare to be resolved by stealth, but
apparently our hospital opponents are afraid of open honest debate and
prefer to do their lobbying under the cover of darkness."
In addition to a growing body of evidence demonstrating the success of
efforts by Physicians who have left the hospital bureaucracy to start their
own, patient-centered facilities, a new study reports physician-ownership
of hospitals " ... has no meaningful affect on market-level Medicare
expenditures."
"Our opponents have argued that eliminating physician owned hospitals
will save Medicare money," she noted. "They use a report from the
Congressional Budget Office that relied on outdated information. We ask CBO
to reevaluate their findings based on this new study."
The study Sandvig cites was conducted by John E. Schneider, PhD,
Pengxiang Li, PhD, and Robert L. Ohsfeldt, PhD, under the auspices of the
Health Economics Consulting Group. [http://www.hecg-llc.com] Project
funding was by an unrestricted grant from PHA.
SOURCE Physician Hospitals of America
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Related links:
http://www.physicianhospitals.org
CONTACT:
Molly Sandvig, JD, Executive Director of
Physician Hospitals of America, +1-605-731-2575, mobile,
+1-605-321-3483, molly@physicianhospitals.org
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