By Joe Ulery
5/14/2009
Many home health care providers and hospitals who use Medicare support parts of President Obama's call to for a medical system makeover.
However, they are opposed to a call to cut their own bottom line by $37 billion dollars.
Fifty nurses from 50 states are in Washington, urging lawmakers not to cut $13 billion dollars in Medicare. They say it is needed for patients using home health care and hospice.
Paula Long is a registered nurse at Sullivan County Community Hospital in southwest Indiana.
She is among the group in D.C.
"We are non-profit... We lose money... If they take more [money] away from us, it's possible that our agency and many like it across the United States would have to close," Long said.
But proponents of the cuts are telling a different story.
A government study reports evidence of improper payments, to charging Medicare for treating patients who are not housebound and charging for medically unnecessary visits.
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