Max Baucus: “I, too, pledge to work with the Senator from Massachusetts. Last year the Senator from Ohio and myself introduced…”

“I, too, pledge to work with the Senator from Massachusetts. Last year the Senator from Ohio and myself introduced legislation in the Medicare providers bill to address this very issue. It is called the DSH cliff, essentially. The Medicaid payments are scheduled to go off a cliff--that is, dramatically lowered--and we had extended the level of payments for a couple years last year to avoid the cliff, the point being that we are very cognizant of the problem facing the large public hospitals, particularly in urban areas that serve a disproportionate number of low-income people. We will certainly work very hard to deal with this when we take up the Medicare legislation in the next couple of months.”