Health Care "Call to Action" sent to employees

[MountainLaurel]

I work at a health care organization in the South in a community with a striking shortage of health care providers. All employees received this email this afternoon, along with prewritten faxes to our senators. I am fuming right now. Had the expanded Medicare been in existence 5 years ago, my in-laws would not have spent their entire life savings and then some (in the hundreds of thousands) trying to pay for their health care after they were both diagnosed with cancer in their 50s: This is an issue very close to my heart. Luckily, most of the coworkers I know are likely to ignore it, and the true believers are likely to have already sent in their comments via the Teabaggers' automated emails.

We are at a critical moment in healthcare history and need your help in sending the attached message to Senator X and Senator Y. Although the healthcare reform legislation emerging in the Senate is well intended, the bill includes significant payment reductions coupled with an expansion of the Medicare program that would devastate the healthcare delivery system. These policies threaten our ability to provide high quality care to our patients and the jobs and talented staff that serve their needs.

Z Company will continue to support constructive policies and proposals emphasizing public health and sound medical management. We will oppose policies that create problems for patients and undermine the healthcare delivery system.

We need your help as soon as possible- please take a moment to sign and fax the attached message to Senator X and Senator Y today.

Thank you for your support on this crucial matter.

The text of the fax, which is on corporate letterhead:

Please protect healthcare workers and hospitals in so that they can continue to provide quality healthcare to their communities of patients by addressing the following three issues in the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” (H.R. 3590):

Priority #1: Reduce Payment Cuts or Increase Health Insurance Coverage
Payments to hospitals are estimated to be cut by $2 billion over ten years because the expanded availability of insurance coverage does not meet the targets established in an agreement with the hospital field. hospitals face a critical need to increase the number of people that receive insurance coverage under the bill or decrease the amount of payment reductions.

Priority #2: Oppose Expanding Medicare
Expanding Medicare is financially unsustainable for patients, providers and businesses. Medicare pays hospitals just 91 cents for each dollar of care provided, yet the proposal being considered would allow people ages 55-64 to enroll in Medicare instead of the insurance exchange. The financial consequences to providers would be devastating, resulting in a significant reduction of Medicare participating providers and problems with access to medical services for patients.

Priority #3: Protect and Enhance ’s Medicaid Federal Medical Assistance
Percentage (FMAP)
hospitals support a provision in the Senate health reform bill that would substantially address ’s FMAP decline in 2011 and possibly in future years. This provision would provide relief to states that have experienced a disaster that resulted in a dramatic decrease in their FMAP. In addition, supports a provision in the House health reform bill that would extend Section 5001 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to help all states address Medicaid financial shortfalls. These provisions would mitigate a dramatic decline in ’s FMAP in 2011 and would allow the state to make strategic improvements to their healthcare infrastructure that will lower costs while maintaining quality of care in the future.