Angie Craig: “We have a phenomenal nursing shortage in our country today. So if a nurse lives on one side of a boundary line created…”

“We have a phenomenal nursing shortage in our country today. So if a nurse lives on one side of a boundary line created by this law, she or he can well commute to the other side and we cannot afford them. Spokane, WA, has a different payment schedule than Coeur d'Alene, ID, and they are 20 miles of interstate apart. Many people say that living in Coeur d'Alene, ID, because of its beauty, is more desirable than living in Spokane, but they work in Spokane because of the wage scale and/or this particular problem. As a result, the Kootenai Medical Center and, as a result, the rural medical communities of northern Idaho cannot, in effect, compete. It is time that we address this issue evenhandedly across all jurisdictions so that Medicare payments are reflective of current health care needs; not a 30-year-old model that is just flat obsolete and does not make sense anymore.”