Conrad Calls Passage of Medicare Bill a Victory for North Dakota

 

Dear Friend, Given your interest in health care, I wanted to alert you to a very important victory for North Dakota. On Wednesday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to pass the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Providers (MIPP) Act. This is important legislation that will help make Medicare work better for patients and providers in North Dakota and across the nation. I am proud to say this bill included a number of important provisions that I have championed to help sustain North Dakota's health care system. As you well know, North Dakota gives the best quality of care in the nation, yet we receive the lowest Medicare reimbursement. This is not fair, and I fought tirelessly to include provisions in the Medicare bill to erase this inequity. For example, the bill contains a 12-month extension of the Section 508 program, which I created, to help hospitals recruit and retain doctors and nurses and make infrastructure improvements. It also contains a grant program that I designed to help Critical Access Hospitals, like Richardton, transition to a nursing home or assisted living facility. Helping Richardton make this transition would allow St. Joseph's hospital in Dickinson to gain Critical Access Hospital status, significantly increasing reimbursement to St. Joe's so that this vital regional medical center can keep its doors open. In addition, the bill increases reimbursement for the state's very small hospitals when they perform lab services for other facilities. The Medicare bill also includes significant provisions for our physicians. First, it erases a projected 10.6 percent payment cut and instead will keep North Dakota physicians' payments whole for the remainder of the year and boost payments by 1.1 percent in 2009. In addition, it extends a provision that raises reimbursement for doctors in rural areas. Finally, the bill includes provisions to boost payments for ambulance services and pharmacies, which are critically important to the health care safety net of North Dakota, and helps to encourage the usage of telemedicine in nursing homes and dialysis units. While we don't yet know the exact figures, this bill will inject tens of millions of dollars into North Dakota's health care system, maintaining top quality health care throughout our state. It is my hope that the President will reconsider his veto threat and sign this bill into law as soon as possible. For further information on important health care topics, please visit my Web site at www.conrad.senate.gov. Sincerely, KENT CONRAD United States Senate You have received this e-mail because you have signed up for Health Care Issue Updates and may live in the area. If you do not want to receive future updates, you can remove yourself from this mailing list by visiting my Web page at http://conrad.senate.gov/issues/signup.cfm. Please feel free to forward this e-mail to others who you think would be interested in this information. If this e-mail was forwarded to you and you would like to sign up to receive future updates directly from me, please visit my Web page at http://conrad.senate.gov/issues/signup.cfm.