Washington Times
Rep. Charles Boustany Jr.
December 16, 2009
“…As a physician practicing medicine in my hometown of Lafayette, La., I saw firsthand the difficulty Medicare patients endure. For years, declining physician reimbursements because of cost-cutting measures led to fewer doctors accepting new Medicare patients. Those problems could soon become much worse.
Seniors could be forced to compete with a large new pool of Medicare enrollees for coveted doctor’s office visits and services…
Medicare already faces a $37 trillion shortfall in the coming years as more and more baby boomers join the government health care system. Expanding Medicare to millions of new patients, as Senate Democrats propose, would further hamper the program’s ability to provide quality health care.
In addition to the strain on Medicare to be brought on by the new enrollees, the Senate overhaul contains drastic funding cuts that would further worsen the problem. Under the current health care overhaul proposal, many seniors, including more than 140,000 seniors in Louisiana alone, could see their benefits reduced or the premiums increased…
[T]he Senate bill would cut more than $135 billion from hospitals serving seniors. It would eliminate $40 billion from home health agencies, $15 billion from nursing homes and nearly $8 billion from hospices. Each of these important Medicare services helps our seniors during very difficult times for them and their families, and these cuts would hurt their care.
As a heart surgeon, I know we can do better addressing Medicare’s looming budget disaster in a responsible way that cannot be accomplished with these arbitrary reductions…
The Senate health care overhaul fails to lower costs, makes arbitrary cuts that would hurt seniors’ access to doctors and add enrollees to an already stressed program…
We should not sacrifice quality care to save cost … It requires scrapping the current Democratic proposal and working together.
However, this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, said, ‘I think we would do almost anything to pass a health care bill.’
With Democratic leadership like that in Washington, seniors are asking, just what will that mean for me?
Rep. Charles Boustany Jr., a heart surgeon, is a Louisiana Republican and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over Medicare.”