Ask Your Members of Congress to Oppose SNF Payment Cuts Today

VHCA (6/18/2009)

Ask your Members of Congress to OPPOSE the $18 billion in SNF Medicare cuts recently proposed by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). There are only 4 days left to let your representatives know of your concern.  Therefore, you must ask your Senators and U.S. Representatives to communicate this message to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Please do two things:

1. Ask your Senators to send individual letters to Secretary Sebelius. For your letters to the Senate, we have included a web address to a sample letter your Senators can use to send to Secretary Sebelius. Click here  to send a letter to your Senators.
2. Ask your Representative to sign on to the Berkley-Capito-Pomeroy "Dear Colleague" letter by clicking here and entering your zip code.

Why We Oppose the Proposed SNF Cuts
We oppose the approximately $18 billion in cuts to Medicare reimbursement for skilled nursing care proposed by CMS in its recently issued Fiscal Year 2010 Notice of Proposed Rule Making. CMS seeks these funds to make up for its own projection error related to the 2006 implementation of revisions to the SNF patient classification system (RUG-III.)

VHCA and AHCA are gravely concerned that this ill-timed administrative tactic will slash Medicare funding for skilled nursing facility (SNF) care by $1.05 billion in FY 2010 alone, rising to $7.23 billion over five years, and totaling $18 billion over ten years.

Implementation of this Medicare regulation will eliminate at least 30,000 good health care jobs, undermine economic stimulus initiatives, and derail badly-needed delivery system reforms already helping beneficiaries and taxpayers. Further, these cuts will cause a $2.5 billion reduction in business activity, and force the loss of $1.1 billion in labor income nationwide.

Therefore, we urge the Administration and Congress to avoid adopting short-term, budget-driven policies that are inconsistent with the goal of improving post-acute care coordination and payment efficiency.

To see how the economic impact of these cuts will affect your state click here.

For more information, click here to view the AHCA issue brief.

To view a copy of the Dear Colleague letter, click here. 

To view a copy of the sample Senate letter to Kathleen Sebelius, click here.