Kay Bailey Hutchison: “I rise to discuss the Hospital Preservation Act that Senator Abraham and I introduced last year. We achieved partial…”

“I rise to discuss the Hospital Preservation Act that Senator Abraham and I introduced last year. We achieved partial relief for hospitals last year, but we have reintroduced it this year in an attempt to get more relief for the beleaguered hospitals of our country. Today we have both the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee working on this very important legislation. We will have legislation that will, at least for this year, restore the cuts that are being made to our hospitals in Medicare payments, but I am hoping we can get more. In fact, there are many areas of our health care system that have been undercut by a combination of the Balanced Budget Act and have actually been cut even more forcefully by the Health Care Financing Administration than was ever intended by Congress. When we passed the Balanced Budget Act, we said we would look at the effects, and if we needed to refine it in any way, we would do that. Congress has met its responsibility in that regard. We had the Balanced Budget Act Refinement Act passed. We have come back and restored cuts that were too much.”