To amend section 340E of the Public Health Service Act (relating to children's hospitals) to modify provisions regarding the determination of the amount of payments for indirect expenses associated with operating approved graduate medical residency training programs.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my good friend, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), for his leadership as ranking member on this Subcommittee on Health, which is so important not only here in the Congress but for our entire country; and to my good friend, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), our chairman. Surely we would not be here this afternoon were it not for his support and pushing to bring this to the floor so that we can consider it.

What this bill is about, Mr. Speaker, is legislation that is going to fix a flaw in the Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education payment formula. This formula inadvertently penalizes Lucile Packard Children's Hospital, which is in my district in Palo Alto.

If I just might depart for a moment, Lucile Packard is the mother and the visionary that established this hospital in Palo Alto. There are many from across the world and from different parts of the country that come to have their children cared for there. So I think she is watching us, and she would be very proud. Were it not for Lucile Packard, as I said, this hospital would not exist today.

Mr. Speaker, a portion of the Graduate Medical Education calculation is based on the severity of case mixes. At Lucile Packard Hospital, which is only one of two hospitals in the United States that offers pregnancy and healthy newborn services, it is then penalized. Most do not take care of healthy newborn babies. When they become part of the mix with the very ill ones, the formula becomes skewed. So if the hospital did not care for the healthy newborns, we would not be here today.

The Committee on Energy and Commerce took a look at this to fix it permanently. As the gentleman stated, that will be taken care of in 2006. Today, we are fixing the small gap between now and 2006. It is going to go a long way.

I want to reassure my colleagues, there are not any costs associated with the bill. This is paid for by a reduction in the fiscal year 2005 payment to all hospitals that receive these payments under the program, and that would not have happened unless the hospitals came together. And they have endorsed this. There is endorsement from the National Association of Children's Hospitals, and I want to thank them for coming together to allow this to happen.

I also want to thank John Ford on the staff of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and certainly Chuck Clapton on the staff of the gentleman from Texas (Chairman Barton), and I want to urge all my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 5204. It is going to help a great deal, and that help is going to be appreciated not only by the children and their families, but also the young physicians that have devoted themselves to a life in medicine; and in this graduate medical payment, it will enjoy the fullness it should and this will be repaired.

Again, I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), most of all for his friendship that I have enjoyed and benefited from and am grateful for since first coming to the House.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5204) to amend section 340E of the Public Health Service Act (relating to children's hospitals) to modify provisions regarding the determination of the amount of payments for indirect expenses associated with operating approved graduate medical residency training programs.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 5204, which would amend section 340(e) of the Public Health Service Act to modify provisions regarding the determination of the amount of payments for indirect expenses associated with operating approved graduate medical residency training programs. This legislation was introduced by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), a lady who does so many great things in the Congress, particularly for her district.

Children's hospitals receive important funding through the Federal Children's Hospitals Graduate Medical Education, which we call GME, Payment Program. This funding helps train residents and better enables children's hospitals to serve all children, regardless their ability to pay.

Next year, the Committee on Energy and Commerce plans to work to reauthorize the Children's Graduate Medical Education Program. As chairman of the Health Subcommittee and a proponent of the children's hospitals throughout my entire time in Congress, I plan to vigorously support this reauthorization.

However, while we will be working to reauthorize the program next year, H.R. 5204 provides a necessary, immediate fix for a small number of hospitals that treat a disproportionately high number of healthy infants. Healthy infants. This legislation would allow these hospitals to receive fair CHGME payments by excluding the number of healthy beds and bassinets in children's hospitals from the case mix adjustment. By excluding these healthy beds and bassinets, these hospitals will no longer be penalized for treating healthy babies.

I urge all my colleagues to support H.R. 5204 today.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

As one of the co-chairs of the Congressional Children's Caucus, I urge my colleagues today to support H.R. 5204, amending section 304e of the Public Health Service Act as it relates to payments to children's hospitals under the Graduate Medical Education program.

The existing provisions of the Public Service Health Act unfairly penalize the two hospitals in the U.S. that offer both pregnancy and healthy newborn services. This penalty is related to calculation of the reimbursements that hospitals receive under the Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program (CHGME).

As it is currently configured, the CHGME program calculates payments to hospitals based on severity of the ``case mix index.'' Healthy newborns, like those treated in these two hospitals, reduce the severity of the case mix index and thus the payments to the hospitals. I believe the current method of calculating these payments is unreasonable.

For example, one of the only two hospitals offering healthy newborn services in the U.S. is the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. When healthy newborns are excluded from the calculation, the Packard hospital has the highest ``case mix index'' of all children's hospitals in California. With the healthy newborns included, it has the lowest. In other words, Packard is unfairly denied resources to treat seriously ill newborns because it also provides services to healthy newborns. Until the problem is corrected, the Packard hospital will continue to be shortchanged more than $300,000 each year.

This bill corrects the reimbursement problem faced by these two hospitals only for fiscal year 2005. Another bill to reauthorize the Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education Act, currently on referral to the Subcommittee on Health, will correct this problem in fiscal year 2006 and future years. This legislation is needed to provide relief to the two affected hospitals in fiscal year 2005. This legislation does not change the eligibility for hospitals to qualify under the CHGME program.

I believe that it is unreasonable to penalize hospitals offering services to healthy newborns and urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to support this legislation and I want to commend its author the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo). She has played a leading role in establishing the successful graduate medical education program that is the focus of today's bill and a whole host of other issues.

The Children's Hospital Graduate Medical Education program, known as Children's GME program, corrected an anomaly in medical education funding that prevented children's hospitals from establishing medical training programs for pediatricians and other children's health specialists, in large part because of the peculiarity of the way we fund graduate medical education through Medicare.

The legislation of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) improves that program by ensuring that hospitals with special programs for certain newborns are not discriminated against in the calculation of medical education funding. This correction is included in both the House and Senate versions of GME reauthorization legislation.

I am proud to be the lead Democratic sponsor of this legislation, along with my colleague, the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson), through H.R. 4578. This legislation before us today provides an interim solution until the reauthorization bill is written into the law, and I urge my colleagues to support the bill offered by the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo), the sponsor of the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 5204 and commend the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Eshoo) for her sponsorship of this legislation.

I represent a congressional district that has five medical schools and 28 hospitals, including Children's Memorial in Chicago, which is one of the best in the Nation. This legislation is going to be very helpful to several of these institutions.

I simply rise in strong support of this legislation, urge passage, and commend again the leadership of this subcommittee for its tremendous activity related to health care and the health care needs of people in these United States of America.