Riley to meet with Obama today

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December 1, 2008

Medicaid ruling’s impact on local hospital on agenda

Anonymous The News Courier Mon Dec 01, 2008, 09:03 PM CST

MONTGOMERY – Gov. Bob Riley and a bipartisan group of governors from across the nation will meet Tuesday in Philadelphia with President-elect Barack Obama to discuss the economic conditions facing the country and ways to stimulate the economy, said a press release from the governor’s office.

Medicaid and its impact on community hospitals, including Athens-Limestone Hospital, is one of the topics to be discussed, the statement said.

The topic is especially important to Alabama because of a recent change in the way the federal government defines hospitals’ costs. That change would result in cuts in the federal reimbursements that Alabama hospitals receive for treating the state’s poorest citizens.

Athens-Limestone Hospital Chief Executive Officer Cary Payne said the local hospital could lose as much as $1 million per year in reimbursements.

Riley said Washington’s ruling on Medicaid is fueling the economic problems.

“I believe fiscal discipline and tax relief are the best ways to speed the recovery, and that’s a message I and many governors will bring to this meeting,” Riley said. “But we also need to discuss Medicaid. The states have to balance their budgets, and that becomes more difficult when Washington makes decisions on Medicaid that exacerbate an already tough problem.”

Riley also said that spending cuts in the federal budget should be used to help pay for new spending on infrastructure, which the President-elect has indicated will be part of a new stimulus plan.

“If new government spending was the key to preventing recessions, then we’d never have a recession,” Riley said. “States are taking action to reduce or cut spending and the federal government should follow our lead on this. I’m encouraged that President-elect Obama last week said it was ‘imperative’ to cut non-essential spending from the federal budget.”

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