Political Quotes

“last month, during National Nurses Week, Ballad Health, a healthcare system in East Tennessee, announced it would be giving several thousand nurses a raise. The head of Ballad Health announced a $10 million investment in pay increases for nurses. He said: ``Our nurses and those who work with them in the provision of direct patient care are heroes . . . however, it is also true that . . . we face significant national shortage of these critical health care providers.'' Alan, the head of Ballad Health, said that his investment was, in part, because of a new rule proposed by the Trump administration in April. This new rule will update the formula that determines how much Medicare will reimburse hospitals for patient care. The formula takes into account, among other things, the cost of labor in that geographic area called the area wage index. This new rule attempts to level the playing field between hospitals in areas that have higher wages, and therefore are reimbursed at a higher rate than hospitals in areas with lower wages. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator, Seema Verma, wrote in a recent op-ed in The Tennessean in Nashville: Many stakeholders have raised concerns that the Medicare hospital payment system disadvantages many rural hospitals. Our proposed rule brings payments to rural and other low-wage hospitals closer to their urban neighbors.…”