Bush to NYC’s Teaching Hospitals: Drop Dead

New York, NY – Today, Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (D-Manhattan, Queens) issued a ringing denunciation of President George Bush’s proposed cuts to America’s teaching hospitals.  “The President’s budget proposals would devastate teaching hospitals and exert a massive and disproportionately negative impact on New York City’s world-class hospitals, medical schools, and research institutions,” said Rep. Maloney.

“While President Bush recklessly proposes continuing to sink billions upon billions of dollars into his failed policy in Iraq, he is now floating an equally reckless and ill-conceived scheme to eliminate Medicaid funding for graduate medical education (GME) – the system that is the very bedrock of healthcare teaching and learning, the system that has made America’s teaching hospitals and medical schools the finest in the world,” said Congresswoman Maloney, a strong advocate in the House for medical education and research and the founder and Chair of the Congressional Working Group on Parkinson’s Disease.  I

t is estimated that New York’s teaching hospitals, which train about one in every seven new doctors in the nation, would stand to lose about $600 million annually in federal Medicaid GME funds and about $100 million annually in federal Medicare funds used to teach new doctors.  In addition to the proposed severe cuts in federal support for GME, other administration proposals will also inflict harm on New York hospitals’ ability to fulfill their vital mission, including the phasing out of Medicare payments to institutions for unrecoverable “bad debt” and eliminating some forms of support for Medicare Indirect Medical Education, among others.

President Bush’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2008 (which begins October 1, 2007) includes about $76 billion in Medicare reductions and about $26 billion in Medicaid cuts, to be implemented over the next five years.  At least $4.6 billion in Medicare reductions and an estimated $3.5 billion in Medicaid cuts would be directly inflicted on hospitals in New York.  The proposed budget would completely eliminate Medicaid GME in FY ‘08 through administrative rules changes. According to the New York State Department of Health, teaching hospitals in New York receive approximately $1.2 billion annually in Medicaid GME payments, with half that amount provided by the federal government.

The Bush proposals come on the heels of proposed regulations that would inflict significant cuts in federal Medicaid funding for public hospitals, which would slice federal support for the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation by about $350 million annually and the state budget by hundreds of millions of dollars.  Congresswoman Maloney has also spoken out publicly against the previous Bush proposals.

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