Statement
by Congressman Jerry F. Costello on Balanced Budget "Give Back"
November 1, 2000
The U.S. House passed a $240 billion tax bill last week that included a provision called the Balanced Budget "Give Back" to help health care providers that were severely affected by the Balanced Budget Agreement passed by the Congress in 1997. While the bill has some good provisions in it, I voted against it and have urged the Senate to reject the bill and the President to veto it if it reaches his desk in its current form.
I have strongly supported and worked hard to pass a Balanced Budget Act correction bill in order to provide assistance to all health care providers that lost revenue as a result of the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. However, I cannot support this bill because it gives almost half of the money to HMOs at the expense of hospitals, nursing homes, home health care agencies, hospices and many other health care providers. In short, the Republican bill gives a huge handout to HMOs at the expense of hospitals and other health care providers.
The Republican tax bill diverts over 40% of all of the money in the bill to managed care companies without any guarantee that Medicare HMOs will stop dropping benefits or abandoning senior citizens all together. This past year, the government invested an additional $1.4 billion into the Medicare managed care program, and then watched while nearly 1 million seniors and disabled individuals across the nation lost their coverage. In our area alone, thousands of seniors have lost or will lose their HMO coverage by the end of the year. It is clear that increasing payments to managed care providers without any accountability does not work! Giving over 40% of the money in this bill to HMOs does very little to insure coverage for our seniors and comes at the expense of our hospitals and other providers.
We can and must do better! I believe that we can and must negotiate a better deal for our hospitals, nursing homes, hospice and other health care providers while at the same time closing the Medicaid loophole that has cost Illinois hospitals $500 million a year.I urge my colleagues in the Senate and the President to reject this bill and force the Congress to pass a bill that is fair to our hospitals and other providers before the end of this session of Congress.