The following is a call-to-action from our partners, the National Rural Health Association:

Extend Rural Medicare Add-on Payments

On December 31, 2009, a number of rural Medicare add-on payments expired. Although extenders of these provisions were included in both the Senate and House versions of health reform legislation, these payments have lapsed, jeopardizing access to care for rural Medicare beneficiaries, while health reform lingered.

As you well know, rural health care providers operate on a very thin margin and these payments allow them to remain in business and providing care to patients in their communities. Email your Senators today and urge them to, retroactively to the date of their expiration, extend these important provisions as part of any current legislation, along with preventing the 21 percent cut in Medicare physician payments expected at the beginning of March.

Please click on the title of this posting to contact Senator Udall and Senator Bennet to urge their support of these rural provisions…..