A top House Republican railed over NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital being classified as a “rural” medical center despite sitting near skyscrapers in the middle of Manhattan’s urban jungle.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Missouri) claimed Sunday that the folksy tag for the hospital showed why America’s “titanic” health care spending was out of control and ripe for abuse.
“This past week I actually brought in some of the largest hospital CEOs to analyze the skyrocketing costs that all Americans are facing,” Smith said Sunday on 77 WABC’s “Cats Roundtable.”
He and other Congress members grilled NY-Presbyterian CEO Brian Donley about the “rural” category, with Smith claiming it was done to get “special benefits afforded to hospitals with the tag.”
“I asked him how his flagship hospital in Manhattan off of 68th St. can be designated as rural. I haven’t seen very many farms in Manhattan,” Smith told radio host John Catsimatidis. “There’s a loophole in the system that allows him to do it.”
NewYork-Presbyterian isn’t the only non-rural hospital treated as one — Smith said 425 different hospitals have received rural funding over the past six years.
“These are things we’ve got to clean up,” Smith said.
The Ways and Means Committee released a statement that said, “This is a prime example of why rural Americans face challenges accessing care and how benefits allocated for rural hospitals end up in exams rooms in big cities.”
Donley defended Presbyterian’s rural designation because it receives 8,000 patient referrals from rural hospitals every year.
“We’re proud to take care of those patients,” Donley said during his testimony.
The hospital said in a statement to The Post that “ensuring access to high‑quality health care for rural communities is critically important.”
“We qualify as a Rural Referral Center under the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services allowing us to deliver complex and specialized care to those communities—we treat patients from all 50 states,” the statement said.
It’s just the latest federal scrutiny of the NY-Presbyterian Hospital and Health System.
The Justice Department filed an anti-trust lawsuit against the system in March, alleging the hospital was using its market share to strike “unlawful contracts” with insurers to prevent patients from being shown less expensive health plans.
NY-Presbyterian said the lawsuit was “without merit.”
Smith said he’s concerned about growing consolidation of healthcare providers leading to monopolistic practices, particularly citing hospitals buying doctors’ medical practices.
“They receive higher reimbursement rates than what doctors do,” he said.
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He claimed a hospital in Florida charged a patient $13,000 for an emergency CT-scan that cost just $79 in a doctor’s office during a follow-up visit.
In general, Smith said the healthcare system is “broken” because hospitals, health insurers, drug manufacturers and medical-device manufacturers have too much clout in the halls of Congress through their lobbying arms.
“Why it’s gotten out of control is that so many people are not willing to rock the boat when it comes to looking at these issues and getting the facts out,” he said. “They have so many people hired here trying to protect their carve outs. Their special reimbursements. Their special provisions. And when you start trying to shake the ship, man, people start getting nervous.
“This is the time that this Titanic starts turning,” he added. “It’s not going to end well if we don’t.”
