[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 19 (Wednesday, February 15, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Page S1359]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. BUNNING:
  S. 2289. A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to 
increase the per resident payment floor for direct graduate medical 
education payments under the Medicare program; to the Committee on 
Finance.
  Mr. BUNNING. Mr. President, today I am introducing important 
legislation that will have an impact on many of the hospitals in my 
State, along with hundreds of hospitals in other States. This 
legislation deals specifically with the Medicare payments for Direct 
Graduate Medical Education--also known as DGME.
  I am pleased that Congressman Ron Lewis from Kentucky's Second 
District is the lead sponsor of a companion bill already introduced in 
the House of Representatives.
  Medicare pays teaching hospitals for its share of the cost of 
training new physicians. These payments are known as DGME payments. 
Teaching hospitals initially reported their direct costs to the 
Department of Health and Human Services in the mid-1980s. These 
reported amounts are now the basis for which each teaching hospital is 
reimbursed.
  Unfortunately, there was a disparity in the types of costs each 
hospital reported, which has lead to large disparities in payments 
between hospitals. Hospitals are also being reimbursed on data that is 
20 years old, at this point.
  To help rectify this problem, in 1999 Congress established a floor 
for calculating Medicare payments for DGME at 70 percent of the 
national average. In 2001, Congress raised the floor to 85 percent of 
the national average.
  The legislation I am introducing today would bring all of Medicare's 
DGME hospitals up 100 percent of the national average. This is an 
important change that would help many teaching hospitals in Kentucky 
and across the Nation be fairly reimbursed for training our young 
doctors.
  For example, there are 19 hospitals in Kentucky that currently 
receive reimbursements below the national average. This means that 
Kentucky hospitals lose more than two million a year because of the 
lower reimbursement rate. Across the country, there are about 600 
hospitals being reimbursed below the national average.
  This legislation takes an important step to ensure that Medicare's 
payment policy for teaching hospitals are fair and that these 
institutions can continue to do the important work they do. I hope my 
colleagues will take a close look at the bill and can support it.
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