Governor Tom Vilsack’s urging Iowans to take a specific beef to President Bush when Bush visits the Iowa State Fair tomorrow.Vilsack says while the President’s coming to talk about trade, he wants Iowans to complain about the state’s lowest-in-the-nation Medicare reimbursement rate for the health care services senior citizens use.Vilsack says Bush is making his seventh visit to Iowa since he came President, and it’s a wonderful opportunity to remind Bush of the unfairness. Bush’ll be in Iowa to help raise money for Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Gross and make a speech at the State Fair, so the Democrat Governor won’t have an opportunity to take his beef about Medicare to the President himself. Vilsack is urging Iowans to pester Bush, as well as the other national politicians who campaign here. He says Iowans should talk to national leaders who criss-cross the state on the campaign trail.Joseph LaValley, a v-p at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines, says the reimbursement rate is a financial hurt that needs to be cured. LaValley says if Mercy Hospital were transplanted in Lincoln, Nebraska, it would have pulled in nine million more dollars last year from Medicare to do exactly the same work with the same people and the same patients.
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