Tucked Away In Cliff Deal, Millions For Two Small Hospitals (VT)
Tucked Away In Cliff Deal, Millions For Two Small Hospitals
Bob Kinzel
Tucked away in last week's Congressional Fiscal Cliff compromise, is a provision that will provide several million dollars to two Vermont hospitals and consumers could benefit directly from this development.
In 1990, Congress created a program to help small rural hospitals, that have a high percentage of Medicare patients, cope with fluctuating Medicare reimbursement rates. But funding for the program expired on September 30th and there was a lot of doubt about whether Congress would reauthorize it.
Congressman Peter Welch worked with many of his colleagues from rural states to include funds for the program in the Fiscal Cliff compromise."
"Rural America has hospitals that are absolutely vital providing health care to seniors their community but it's low volume but they have fixed costs that are significant as any hospital does," said Welch. "So this legislation continues a program that provides fair reimbursement for those critical access rural hospitals and we have several in Vermont."
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