[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 160 (Tuesday, October 17, 1995)]
[House]
[Page H10088]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




[[Page H 10088]]


                      CRACK DOWN ON MEDICARE FRAUD

  (Mr. BROWN of Ohio asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, in an editorial on Friday, USA Today 
said:

       Medicare reform invites doctors to bend the rules. Easing 
     limits on physicians' self-referral is bound to cost the 
     program billions it cannot afford.

  USA Today called the deal cut between the American Medical 
Association and the Speaker a payoff to the AMA. It simply eliminates 
fraud by legalizing it.
  Another newspaper said the Speaker's concessions made an already bad 
Medicare bill substantially worse. This bill was never designed to give 
the elderly high-quality care.
  What concerns me most about that, Mr. Speaker, is that we can save, 
and this is a conservative estimate, we can save $100 billion over the 
next 7 years by going after fraud.
  Instead of cutting Medicare $270 billion to give tax breaks to the 
wealthy, we should go after fraud aggressively. Crack down on fraud, 
that is what the Medicare debate should be about, not cutting Medicare, 
raising people's premiums and deductibles and copay $1,000 per person 
per year so we can give a tax break to the wealthiest Americans.

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