WASHINGTON, DC – At a hearing of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday, U.S. Senator Pat Roberts said the Administration’s budget proposal to cut $143 million from the rural health care delivery system would damage the quality and accessability of rural health care.

Senator Roberts told U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt that "The proposed budget has drastic cuts in payments to rural physicians, hospitals, and home health care providers. I don’t see how these providers, often the sole provider in many communities, can sustain these cuts. I certainly do not want to be in the business of tying the hands of our health care providers, especially those in our rural areas, and ultimately harming our seniors and low-income populations by restricting their access to care. "

In Kansas, 88 of 105 counties are considered rural or frontier. Over 75 percent of community hospitals are located in rural areas and 84 percent have fewer than 100 beds.

The budget proposal suggests elimination or reductions in funding to the following programs:

• Rural Outreach Grants and Rural Hospital Flexibility Grants: provides funds for innovative networking and outreach activities, provides recruitment for clinicians, and establishes a Statewide Critical Access Hospital Performance Improvement Program, which is now being replicated in several other states because of its success in Kansas. These programs are to be eliminated.
• The National Health Service Corps and Title VII Health Professions programs: recruits health care professionals to under-served areas like Kansas
• High Risk Pools: provides health insurance coverage for individuals who would otherwise be uninsured because of pre-existing medical conditions or inability to afford care.

"I agree that we need to return to a policy of fiscal responsibility and we must get a handle on the growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending so these programs are viable and sustainable for future generations," Senator Roberts said. "However, I’m afraid of going down a path where in order to save a few bucks here or a few dollars there, we end up hurting the people these programs were created to serve."

Senator Roberts, a member of the Senate Committee on Finance and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, is a member of the Senate Rural Health Care Caucus.