The Nation - News from Feb. 27, 1985

New Medicare spending curbs are not hurting hospital care, government officials told Congress, but doctors, relatives and a House committee chairman said some elderly patients are being sent home too sick and too soon. The critics told the House Select Committee on Aging that patients will suffer and that some hospitals may close if Medicare hospital payments are frozen, as requested by President Reagan in his 1986 budget. “While I have no doubt that the health care system had grown somewhat ‘fat,’ I am concerned that these recent efforts to trim that fat have not been done with surgical precision,” Committee Chairman Edward R. Roybal (D-Los Angeles) said in opening remarks.