[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 114 (Monday, July 27, 2009)]
[House]
[Page H8849]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          HEALTH CARE THIEVES

  (Mr. POE of Texas asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute.)
  Mr. POE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, it's time to put common sense into 
health care reform. The first thing to do is focus on current fraud and 
waste. The part of health care that the government already runs, like 
Medicare and Medicaid, wastes billions of dollars every year, and 
billions more are lost through fraud.
  The national health care antifraud system says Medicare fraud costs 
American taxpayers $68 billion every year. The FBI says health care 
fraud may be as high as 10 percent of costs, which means the crooks and 
the cheats are stealing $226 billion a year from taxpayers. That's 
money that should be going to treat the sick and the disabled. Now 
taxacrats want to hand all of our health care money over to the 
bureaucrats.
  Law enforcement needs to go after Medicare and Medicaid cheats before 
we consider nationalized health care. We can save billions of dollars 
on health care by simply sending the crooks to jail. Fix the obvious 
stealing and waste before we encourage more fraud and abuse under a 
universal government-run health care system.
  And that's just the way it is.

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