Kathy Castor: “You all are absolutely right. It is very difficult to understand why the White House wants to sock it to our safety net…”

“You all are absolutely right. It is very difficult to understand why the White House wants to sock it to our safety net hospitals. Have you all been to the emergency room lately, tried to get in? The long lines? People are ending up in our emergency rooms for their primary care because they have the flu. They are clogging the emergency rooms. I was a county commissioner before I was elected to Congress, and the brave men and women in fire rescue said they would transport to the emergency room. It would be so busy and so full, they would have to stay with the emergency patient in the EMS truck for hours because the emergency room was clogged. We have a crisis in this country, and it is inexplicable that the Bush administration would say by administrative rule and through this budget that has been sent to the Congress this week that we are going to cut money to those hospitals that provide the charity care in our country. In my district, in the Tampa Bay area, the impact on Tampa General Hospital, which is a level one trauma center, $64 million. The great All Children's Hospital across the bay in Saint Petersburg, $31 million; the great St. Joseph's Hospital, another $20 million.”