Lawmakers back bill after money added for rural health care

From staff and wire reports

WASHINGTON -- Rural lawmakers from Kansas and Missouri said Tuesday they would support a major spending bill after negotiators added more than $90 million to fund rural health care programs.

Reps. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., and Jerry Moran, R-Kan., were part of a group of Republicans that helped defeat an earlier version of the bill last month.

Emerson said she is satisfied with the amount of rural health-care funding restored and will support the bill. The additional funding will go for medical research, training and education in rural areas, as well as support rural health care facilities.

"Our biggest challenge in rural health care is training and keeping medical professionals," Emerson said. "Doctors, nurses and medical technicians are critical to the administration of quality care in sparsely-populated regions of the country."

Emerson voted against a previous version of the spending legislation because of low or absent levels of funding for rural health programs that directly affected her district.

More than $9 million in funding was restored to the Office of Rural Health Research and Policy, which is a division of Health and Human Services, Emerson said. The office ensures that rural America has a coordinated voice on national rural health issues. The office also plays a critical role, Emerson said, in disseminating information to rural citizens to help them stay informed about new Medicare benefits. The office offers several publications to rural residents.

The new bill also restores funding for Area Health Education Centers to $29 million, the same as last year. There are seven such centers across the state, including one in Poplar Bluff, the Southeast Missouri Area Health Education Center.

Executive director Sherri Hinrichs said that the center would have received no funding under the old bill and would have had to close.

The center recruits students to enter the medical field, she said, and then helps provide training for them. They then promise to practice for a period of time in a designated rural area.

"The whole picture is it's a grass roots effort to grow our own medical providers," Hinrichs said. "We really appreciate Congresswoman Emerson's support."

The new bill also adds $28.5 million for Rural Health Outreach Grants, which have in the past gone to Phelps, Washington, Ripley, Shannon, Douglas counties and others. The new bill increases funding for training as well as for community health centers. The bill retains controversial cuts in grant programs for medical training, community colleges and state and local health departments. The measure would cut spending on Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative by about 3 percent.

Southeast Missourian business editor Scott Moyers contributed to this report.

The revised legislation, which steers $602 billion for the nation's health, education and social programs, now includes money for rural health programs, such as grants for community health centers and funding for training and support programs designed to encourage more physicians to practice in rural areas.

The add-ons were financed by a cut of $120 million in pandemic preparedness funds. That cut, in turn, may be restored when lawmakers address President Bush's $7 billion request to combat bird flu.

The bill retains controversial cuts in grant programs for medical training, community colleges and state and local health departments. On education, the measure would cut spending on Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative by about 3 percent after years of healthy increases.

House GOP leaders are cautiously optimistic that the measure will pass both houses of Congress later this week, despite the objections of Democrats and some Senate GOP moderates.