Missouri’s Senator Roy Blunt says Missouri hospitals will get their part of another $50 billion set aside from CARES Act funding this week. This week’s funding is based on past billing experience.
“We’re trying to make this easy, not hard, and do what we can to get hospitals in the place where they are stabilized again. Some money will then go to the surge hospital areas, about $10 billion dollars, and another $10 billion will go to rural hospitals. We are particularly concerned about those rural hospitals in Missouri,” Blunt told Missourinet today.
Blunt says the remaining $20 to be distributed nationally should “true up the real picture” of what hospital incomes were in 2018 and see what can be replaced because of demands of the coronavirus response.
“Because they were asked to stand ready to deal with a pandemic didn’t have the income that they would have had, though we were still asking those hospitals to keep their staff to be ready to deal with the next thing,” Blunt said.”
The first $30 billion was delivered last week and was based on 2019 Medicare billing. Missouri health care providers and hospitals got $618 million of that.
Blunt is chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education.