Washington, D.C. -Darrell G. Kirch, M.D., president and CEO of the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges), issued the following comments on the Bush administration's FY 2009 budget:

"The AAMC strongly opposes the administration's proposal to slash Medicare payments to America's teaching hospitals. Cutting indirect medical education (IME) payments by more than 60 percent, combined with other Medicare cuts affecting all hospitals, will have devastating results. Millions of Medicare patients-as well as the uninsured, the disabled, and the severely ill-rely on teaching hospitals for health care and community services. Such unprecedented cuts to these institutions will endanger their ability to provide the full spectrum of patient care and treatment, erode their fragile trauma and emergency services, and impede the progress they have made in advancing the health of all Americans through education and medical research.

The nation's teaching hospitals already face the potential loss of Medicaid payments for graduate medical education, which are vital to training our future physicians. The combined impact of these Medicare and Medicaid cuts would severely hamper the ability of teaching hospitals to educate and train an adequate supply of physicians and avert a serious shortage. To compound the problem, the AAMC is also disappointed that the president did not use this opportunity to address Medicare physician payments, which are scheduled to be cut by more than 10 percent on July 1. The nation's teaching physicians are also a critical part of providing care to Medicare and other vulnerable patients.

In addition, we are extremely concerned that the administration's spending plan freezes federal support for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) at last year's level of $29.2 billion. If this proposal is enacted, the NIH budget will fail to keep pace with biomedical inflation for an unprecedented sixth consecutive year, resulting in the loss of more than $3.7 billion in purchasing power over that period. To build upon the enormous progress we have made as a nation in medical research and transform health care, there must be a stable and sustained federal investment in the NIH that at least keeps pace with biomedical inflation.

The overall impact of these proposed budget cuts to health care and research will have a damaging long-term impact on the health of all Americans and the future economic vitality of our nation. We call on Congress to immediately reject these short-sighted recommendations."

The Association of American Medical Colleges is a not-for-profit association representing all 126 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 68 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and 94 academic and scientific societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC represents 109,000 faculty members, 67,000 medical students, and 104,000 resident physicians. Additional information about the AAMC and U.S. medical schools and teaching hospitals is available at www.aamc.org/newsroom.