Lizzie Fletcher: “I think what the gentleman points out is very true. The President cut Medicare or proposed to cut Medicare by $16…”

“I think what the gentleman points out is very true. The President cut Medicare or proposed to cut Medicare by $16 billion. What I am seeing as I travel across my district, as I have held a number of town hall meetings, is that right now we have hospitals that are operating in the red, rural hospitals that provide that local care that is needed, to where if there is an emergency, a stroke, for example, it is very important to get there immediately, yet we have rural hospitals that possibly will have to close because of the cuts that this administration has already done through HCFA and these further cuts that they are talking about. Then the President is also talking about raising taxes and fees, and some of those fees are to some of these providers. I read recently and what we hear is that now some of the providers and physicians are beginning to drop out of Medicare and they are beginning to drop out of Medicare because of the cuts, as well as the administrative difficulties of dealing with this administration have become so complex that they are saying we can no longer provide the care. What is this going to do for our senior citizens? When we start operating a hospital or nursing home, a long-term care facility and we really have to cut back on the number of nurses that we have that are caring for those patients, it is going to have a tremendous impact on the health care and the quality of health care that we can provide for our senior citizens.”