National Rural Health Association Honors Grassley


? Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Special Committee on Aging, this evening will receive the 1999 Legislative Award from the National Rural Health Association. The text of Grassley's remarks from the awards ceremony follows.

Remarks of Sen. Chuck Grassley to the National Rural Health Association:

Thank you very much for the award. It's a special honor to be recognized by this group of people, because it's you who are doing the hard day-to-day work of delivering health care in rural America.

My role is to support you in your efforts. All we in Washington can do is try to make sure you have the resources you need, and then try to get out of your way!

I also want to thank your leadership here in Washington for the help they provide to us in Congress. Particularly here in the Senate, where virtually all of us represent states that include both urban and rural areas, we rely on NRHA to remind members of the needs of their rural constituents. They do a good job.

As you know, in 1999 we won some battles and we lost some. You know these issues better than I do, but here are some of the ones I considered most important:

?Therapy caps ? this was a hard-fought victory.
?Hospital outpatient payments ? I'm pleased we got a delay, but I'd like to see it made permanent.
?Medicare Dependent Hospital program ? I'm pleased we got an extension, but frustrated that we couldn't get the program updated.
?Rural Health Clinics and Community Health Centers ? we got the best deal we could by delaying the phase-out of the current payment system, but it wasn't as much as we wanted.
?Repeal of the hospital transfer penalty ? I'm disappointed that we weren't able to get more members to agree that this needs to happen.

Looking forward, I think one of the main tasks for the rural health community is to focus on reforming Medicare for the retirement of the Baby Boom generation ? this is very, very urgent.

Today I held a hearing of my Aging Committee on the one Medicare reform proposal that's been made, that of Sens. Breaux and Frist. It's unlikely that we'll achieve reform this year, but we need to get moving on it this year in order to lay the foundation for action next year.

By design, one of the issues most discussed at today's hearing is how the Breaux-Frist proposal would work in rural America. Many of the Senators present asked questions about this, and that encourages me. We need to make sure that rural America is front and center as we discuss Medicare's future.

In fact, I think the historical ability of rural health care providers to keep people healthy in a cost-effective way has a lot to teach us as we reform Medicare. I'll consider it my job to make sure that your experience is brought to bear on this discussion.

And I'll give you my assurance that Congress will only enact Medicare reform when we're assured that it'll work for our rural citizens.

Once again, thanks for the recognition, and please keep up the good work.