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Biden: Hospitals To Give $155 Billion In Savings To Help Healthcare Overhaul
July 8, 2009 1:22 p.m. EST
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Kris Alingod - AHN Contributor
Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Hospitals across the nation have agreed to give $155 billion in Medicare and Medicaid savings over the next decade to help the Obama administration pay for a controversial healthcare reform proposal, Vice President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday.
"Reform is coming," Biden said. "We have tried for decades -- for decades -- to fix a broken system, and we have never, in my entire tenure in public life, been this close. We have never been as close as we are today, and things remain on track."
"The hospital industry knows, and the people with me here today know, and the President knows, that the status quo is simply unacceptable," he added. "Rising costs are crushing us. They're crushing families, crushing businesses, crushing state budgets -- and they are crushing the health care industry itself."
The savings, according to Biden, will be gained through a number of hospital reforms such as focusing more on quality care instead of quantity of procedures.
"As our system becomes more efficient -- thanks to innovation, technology and electronic records -- we'll slow increases in Medicare and Medicaid payments to hospitals. As more people are insured, hospitals will bear less of the financial burden of caring for the uninsured and the underinsured, and we'll reduce payments to cover those costs, in tandem with that reduction," he said.
Hospitals are still working out details of the agreement with Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which has has jurisdiction over Medicare, Medicaid, SCHIP and other health entitlement programs. They were one of several health industry groups that had submitted a proposal to the White House in May to reduce healthcare costs within a decade by $2 trillion, or by 1.5 percentage points of spending each year.
The announcement comes a little over two weeks after drug companies agreed to contribute $80 billion over the next decade to help pay for the administration's healthcare overhaul.
Attendees included American Hospital Association president and CEO Rich Umbdenstock, Catholic Health Association of the United States president and CEO Sister Carol Keehan, and Hospital Corporation of America president and CEO Richard Bracken.
But it was greeted with disdain by Republicans, who have been warning against the administration's public option plan.
"The Administration and congressional Democrats are literally bullying health care groups into cutting backroom deals to fund a government takeover of health care," House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said in a statement. "That will increase costs and force millions of Americans out of the health care that they currently have. The American people deserve better."
Democrats in Congress are pushing hard to pass healthcare reform legislation with a voluntary government-run insurance program to defray costs of expanding coverage to the 47 million uninsured Americans.
Obama had said in a speech last month he wants to have a bill on his desk for signing by October. Biden said on Wednesday legislation should be passed by August, referring to the month-long recess Congress takes until early September.
Last week, Senate Democrats rewrote a bill crafted by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Health Committee, in response to Republican criticisms that the reforms would cost $1 trillion according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The CBO has issued a new estimate of $611.4 billion over 10 years for the bill, a "significant" reduction, according to Kennedy, who also touted his public option plan as an alternative to "traditional, for-profit insurance." But the GOP remained unyielding.
The top Republican in the Committee, Sen. Mike Enzi (R-WY), said the revision "doesn't come close to achieving our goal of reducing health care costs." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) dismissed as "unrealistic" Democratic claims "that everyone who likes the insurance they have will be able to keep it and that the cost of such health care proposals won't add to the national debt."
House Democrats are said to be planning to introduce a bill of their own late this week. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) had announced in a press conference with the President in May that a breakthrough had been reached in the administration's healthcare agenda and that a bill would be on the House floor by the end of July.
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