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US Congressional Committee
Slams Medicare for Harassment and Targeting of
Chiropractors
For the past several years Medicare administrators have
made doctors of chiropractic and their patients a target
for selective enforcement and regulatory restriction
under Medicare because of a medical prejudice that is a
gross disservice to both the patient and doctor of
chiropractic. On May 16th, 2002, before a packed
congressional hearing room, that trend was significantly
exposed and debated.
At that hearing Small Business Committee Chairman, The
Hon. Donald Manzullo (R-IL) and over a dozen other
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, pounded
Medicare Administrator Thomas Scully for that program's
ongoing policy of provider harassment. In a four-hour
hearing, witness after witness, including ICA's Central
Regional Director Dr. Michael Hulsebus (right) of
Rockford, Illinois told the Committee how Medicare had
conducted completely unjustified and overtly hostile and
prejudicial attacks, post-payment audits and other
strong-arm activities aimed at hurting non-MD providers.
Dr. Hulsebus addressed the issue succinctly with his
testimony in which he stated, "Chiropractic providers
and patients alike find it alarming when Medicare
administrators take it upon themselves to use program
policies to force health care decisions onto
beneficiaries that ought to be left to the patients
themselves. How else can you characterize policies that
restrict access to one form of care, in this case
chiropractic care, regardless of the clinical realities,
and force those beneficiaries onto second-choice,
specialist-based care that is far more expensive than
the chiropractic care that is being denied? This is not
only offensive in terms of personal liberties and
control over one's own health care; it is also very poor
public policy."
This historic hearing marks a major change in the role
Congress is willing to play in protecting Medicare
providers and Medicare patients from the heavy handed,
arbitrary and prejudice driven operations of the Centers
for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Formerly known
as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the
May 16th hearing was titled: "CMS, New Name, Same Old
Game?" The anger and outrage of the Committee reached a
peak when it was revealed that witnesses at earlier
hearings on Medicare harassment had been subjected to
snap Medicare audits on the very day they appeared
before the Small Business Committee. Chairman Manzullo
immediately called for an investigation of what he
described as intimidation and witness tampering by
Medicare and set a July 17th hearing date for a full
review of this "horrific and frightening" abuse of power
by Medicare authorities.
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