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Moran: Prescription law needs 'tweaking'
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| By: Kurt Erickson, Dispatch intern |
July 14, 2006 |
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Congressman Jerry Moran took a brief guided tour of the Clay County Medical Center and expansion project earlier today. The tour concluded at the Wellness Center, where Moran gave a short speech to a group of local health care professionals.
In his speech, Moran said Congress believes there are too many hospitals, so rural congressmen must fight for medicare reimbursements. Moran is part of a block of 108 congressmen that negotiate for funding for smaller hospitals.
Moran also addressed concerns about health care regulation. He said that rules and regulations are squeezing hospitals and ruining the nursing profession by driving out current nurses and discouraging future ones.
He said numerous problems with patient privacy regulations were caused by two sentences in the law granting the secretary of health authority "to regulate patient privacy.
Moran expressed concern that the prescription drug bill will damage hometown pharmacists, and said that the bill could have been better. He said the law will encourage drug advertising, increasing pressure on doctors to make unnecessary prescriptions. He also said that the drug plan isn't paid for.
Moran said that the cost of health care is the number one domestic issue.
"People who can't afford health care are the crisis of the moment," Moran said.
Moran said that although solutions are currently stalled by congressional politics, problems would eventually come to light and be addressed.
"It needs some tweaking and we will be able to do that," he said.
"We have to get through November before anyone is willing to admit there is a problem," Moran said.
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©Clay Center Dispatch 2009
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Adrain Desaire |
Jul, 26 2006 |
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Moran's statement that he knew there are problems with Medicare Plan D, the precription plan, but they won't be addressed before November, highlights the problem in Congress. They will rubber-stamp a bill the President wants, even though they realize there are problems with it. The Plan D fiasco is an indication of this. How this bill passed has always been a question to me but now I understand how it happened. It was something President Bush wanted and campaigned for, so his little errand boys, our Congressmen and women, passed his bill and thought, " We can go back and fix it later." I just hope later is soon, before the Pharmaceutical Companies have more money than the Federal Government has.
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