[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 76 (Tuesday, May 20, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3187-S3191]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

                                 ______
                                 
      By Ms. MURKOWSKI:
  S. 2357. A bill to provide for improvements in the consistency of 
data collection, reporting, and assessment in connection with the 
suicide prevention efforts of the Department of Defense; to the 
Committee on Armed Services.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President I have come to the floor today to 
introduce a piece of legislation that I feel is timely and critically 
necessary, the Department of Defense Suicide Tracking Act of 2014. As 
our Nation winds down involvement in the longest war in our history, it 
is incumbent on all of us to ensure that the men and women who have 
carried the burden of combat in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other parts of 
the world, as well as their family members, are taken care of to the 
fullest extent possible. That means we must address the tragic suicide 
epidemic in our military. While the services have focused on this 
problem for years, there still appears to be significant gaps, 
especially in reserve component and dependent tracking and analysis. 
This is a complex issue with no obvious solutions, but I intend to work 
with my colleagues in the Senate to develop comprehensive, meaningful 
ways to address this problem.
  The DoD recently released its 2012 DoD Suicide Event Report, which 
concluded that there were a total of 319 active component suicides and 
203 reserve

[[Page S3188]]

component suicides in 2012. That equates to 22.7 and 24.2 for every 
100,000 service members, respectively. Additionally, there were a total 
of 841 attempted suicides in 2012. While preliminary data suggests that 
2013 had an 18 percent drop in suicides, this is still a significant 
and tragic problem in the military that we need to tackle head-on. The 
report doesn't include any data for dependent suicide or attempted 
suicide, because currently only the U.S. Army even tries to track that 
information, so there is no comprehensive assessment of how years of 
combat and readiness have impacted military dependents in that way.
  The purpose of the DoD Suicide Tracking Act is to establish programs 
to consistently track and analyze information regarding suicides 
involving members of the reserve components and dependents of regular 
and reserve component members. Specifically, the bill would improve 
consistency in reserve component suicide prevention and resiliency 
programs by requiring the Secretary of Defense to develop a standard 
method for collecting, reporting, and assessing suicide data and 
suicide attempt data involving members of the National Guard and 
Reserves. Alaskans are extremely proud of the contributions of our 
National Guard and Reserve members, both home and abroad. They have 
endured the stress of readiness, deployments and combat like the active 
component, making us all very proud. As such, it is time that we ensure 
the Department of Defense is tracking and addressing their mental well-
being just like every other military member.
  According to an annual survey by the Blue Star Families military 
family advocacy group, of 5,100 military family members surveyed in 
2012, 9 percent of military spouses reported that they had considered 
suicide. Of those, nearly a quarter said they had not sought help. This 
bill would establish a Department of Defense suicide prevention program 
for military dependents that requires each service to implement 
programs to track, report and analyze information regarding suicides. 
We often talk about the burden placed on military family members, but 
when it comes to suicide we have simply cut them out of the 
conversation. This bill would ensure the DoD finally focuses on the 
hardship and emotional stress born by military dependents and keeps 
them in the picture when evaluating the problem and working towards a 
solution. Our military family members have endured countless 
deployments, cared for injured service members, and picked up the 
pieces when heroes have made the ultimate sacrifice. I intend to make 
sure our government cares for them and gives them options beyond 
suicide to recover from their pain and emotional stress.
  Suicide among the active military, reserve and veteran populations 
continues to be a problem that doesn't appear to be improving. Sadly, 
the problem will likely get worse before it improves as the war in 
Afghanistan winds down and the services downsize, sending veterans with 
complex mental issues into the private sector without the military for 
support. That is why we need to improve our efforts now to proactively 
identify and care for these service members and their families as soon 
as possible and with the full resourcing of the Department of Defense. 
Our military men and women, and their families, have endured years of 
conflict across the world. They embody the proud tradition of selfless 
service to our Nation and I cannot thank them enough for everything 
they do. I call on all of my colleagues in the Senate to help those who 
have dedicated their lives to helping others and who, day in and day 
out, make the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our freedoms.
  I would like to thank Representative Niki Tsongas for her leadership 
on this issue and introduction of the House companion bill, H.R. 4504.
                                 ______
                                 
      By Mr. LEVIN (for himself, Mr. Whitehouse, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. 
        Cardin, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Nelson, Mr. Johnson of South Dakota, 
        Mrs. Feinstein, Mr. Kaine, Ms. Hirono, Mr. King, Ms. Stabenow, 
        Mr. Schatz, Ms. Warren, Mr. Reed, Mr. Harkin, Mr. Franken, Mr. 
        Durbin, Mr. Walsh, and Ms. Klobuchar):
  S. 2360. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify 
the rules relating to inverted corporations; to the Committee on 
Finance.
  Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, along with 16 cosponsors, I have introduced 
and am introducing today the Stop Corporate Inversions Act of 2014.
  This legislation is designed to address a loophole which, unless we 
close it, will be used to unleash a flood of corporate tax avoidance 
that threatens to shove billions of dollars in tax burden from 
profitable multinational corporations onto the backs of their American 
competitors and other American taxpayers.
  The issue we seek to address is known technically as corporate 
inversion. The details of inversion sound complex, but the principle is 
not. Inversion means avoiding potentially billions of dollars of U.S. 
taxes by changing a corporation's address for tax purposes to an 
offshore location. What we have is a tax avoidance scheme, an enormous 
loophole that allows companies to avoid billions in taxes without any 
significant change in where they operate, where their profits are 
generated, or where the location is of the executives who manage and 
control these corporations.
  A recent prominent example involves Pfizer, a U.S. drug company, and 
AstroZeneca, a U.K.-based company. This proposed corporate takeover, 
which Pfizer makes abundantly clear is all about avoiding U.S. taxes, 
has gotten a lot of attention, and for good reason. It would cost the 
United States about $1 billion a year in tax revenue. But this is not 
just about two companies. This is not just about one merger, even a 
merger that could shove billions of dollars of tax burden on other U.S. 
taxpayers. The Pfizer-AstroZeneca deal is the latest example of abusive 
inversion deals. You cannot pick up a newspaper's business section 
these days without reading about what Reuters calls ``a wave of tax-
driven overseas deal-making.'' Some companies that believe they are 
meeting their tax obligations are under competitive pressure to invert. 
It is clear dozens, perhaps scores, of companies are preparing to file 
their change-of-address cards and in doing so avoid billions in U.S. 
taxes. That burden doesn't just go away. Either our remaining 
constituents must pick up the tab or the loss of Treasury revenue adds 
to the Federal deficit.
  We tightened the rules regarding inversion schemes in 2004, and we 
did so promptly and on a bipartisan basis, but recent events show an 
enormous loophole remains, and so our bill seeks to address that 
loophole, and I hope once again we can do so promptly and on a 
bipartisan basis.
  Essentially the problem we have today is that a U.S.-based 
multinational can file a change-of-address card with the IRS simply by 
acquiring an offshore company that is much smaller than the U.S. 
company. Our bill would ensure that any inversion would meet a much 
more stringent test.
  Under current law, companies can pull off an inversion with a 
fraction of their stock, just over 20 percent, in the hands of the new 
stockholders overseas. Our bill would raise that threshold to 50 
percent or more. In addition, it would stop tax-avoiding inversions in 
cases where management and control remain in the United States.
  President Obama's 2014 budget included a similar proposal which one 
expert told the New York Times ``essentially eliminates inversions as 
we know them.''
  Our bill provides for a 2-year moratorium of tax avoidance through 
the use of inversions. Why a 2-year moratorium? This is in response to 
a number of our colleagues who say this is an issue which should wait 
for comprehensive tax reform. We all believe in comprehensive tax 
reform--or most of us do--but it is going to take time and it is 
uncertain. These corporate inversions represent an immediate threat. 
Our Treasury is bleeding from these inversions and from other loopholes 
which corporations use to avoid paying taxes. This bill is first aid 
for the Tax Code. A 2-year moratorium on inversions that do not meet 
our tougher standard stops the bleeding while we debate the 
comprehensive tax reform that most of us believe is desirable.
  As of this moment, however, there is no comprehensive tax reform 
legislation pending in either Chamber of Congress. There is no debate 
scheduled.

[[Page S3189]]

There is, in fact, not a single comprehensive tax reform proposal that 
has been formally introduced as legislation. That is not because no one 
in Congress cares about tax reform; nearly everybody does. But broadly 
reforming taxes is a complicated and time-consuming process.
  But we simply cannot wait. Multinationals are exploiting this 
loophole today. Meanwhile, hard-working American taxpayers and small 
business owners and even large corporations that have to compete with 
the tax avoiders but believe that inversion is wrong for their 
companies and for America see their tax burden rise while our national 
debt grows. How do we look them in the eye and say, ``We had a way to 
halt this gimmick, but we decided to wait for comprehensive reform that 
may or may not ever materialize?''
  This is similar to what Congress did on a bipartisan basis a decade 
ago. Then Senators Baucus and Grassley jointly declared they were 
working on legislation to stop abusive tax inversions. The bill, along 
with Chairman Wyden's announcement 2 weeks ago, should make clear to 
companies that considering tax inversion is now a mistake, because they 
are now on notice that it is not going to gain anything if a bill that 
prohibits tax avoidance through tax inversion passes, because the 
chairman of the Finance Committee has made it clear such a bill is 
going to be effective as of May 8 of this year, regardless of when the 
bill passes.
  So companies are on notice. There is no use rushing to the door to 
invert, or leaving the country to invert. It won't do them any good if 
the Finance Committee chairman has his way with either of these bills 
or other bills that set an appropriate date, such as May 8, to pass the 
Congress.
  These multinational companies benefit from the safety and security 
the U.S. Government provides. Our troops protect them. Our intellectual 
property rights protections allow them to profit from their innovation. 
They benefit from federally funded research. They claim tax subsidies 
for their research and development. They raise capital in U.S. 
securities markets that are the envy of the world, thanks to the rule 
of law this government protects.
  In the last 4 years, one of the companies at the center of this 
debate, Pfizer, received more than $4.4 billion in taxpayer money for 
federal contracts. Last month the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention awarded Pfizer a $1.1 billion contract.
  Yet that company and others are now poised to shortchange Uncle Sam 
by billions of dollars simply by changing their address for tax 
purposes. I am sure most of our constituents wish they could do that. 
Michigan taxpayers cannot reduce their tax bill with the stroke of a 
pen. Michigan small businesses cannot pretend they are based offshore 
for tax purposes. There is no pretense that any of these corporate 
inversions make sense from any standpoint other than avoiding U.S. 
taxes. That is their motivation and these companies aren't shy about 
saying so. They will continue to operate in the United States. The 
executives who manage them will continue to live and work in the United 
States. They will live under the umbrella of protection that our men 
and women in uniform provide, at the same time that we are cutting 
support to those same men and women because of the deficit these tax 
avoidance schemes have helped to create.
  Few even try to defend these inversions on principle. They are simply 
tax avoidance. Even the corporate executives who engineer them make 
little pretense as to any other purpose. So let us reform the Tax Code, 
yes. But while we craft and debate that reform, let us stop these 
transactions that add massively to our deficit and to the burden 
America's working families and small businesses must carry.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be 
printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be 
printed in the Record, as follows:

                                S. 2360

       Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of 
     the United States of America in Congress assembled,

     SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

       This Act may be cited as the ``Stop Corporate Inversions 
     Act of 2014''.

     SEC. 2. MODIFICATIONS TO RULES RELATING TO INVERTED 
                   CORPORATIONS.

       (a) In General.--Subsection (b) of section 7874 of the 
     Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended to read as follows:
       ``(b) Inverted Corporations Treated as Domestic 
     Corporations.--
       ``(1) In general.--Notwithstanding section 7701(a)(4), a 
     foreign corporation shall be treated for purposes of this 
     title as a domestic corporation if--
       ``(A) such corporation would be a surrogate foreign 
     corporation if subsection (a)(2) were applied by substituting 
     `80 percent' for `60 percent', or
       ``(B) such corporation is an inverted domestic corporation.
       ``(2) Inverted domestic corporation.--For purposes of this 
     subsection, a foreign corporation shall be treated as an 
     inverted domestic corporation if, pursuant to a plan (or a 
     series of related transactions)--
       ``(A) the entity completes after May 8, 2014, and before 
     May 9, 2016, the direct or indirect acquisition of--
       ``(i) substantially all of the properties held directly or 
     indirectly by a domestic corporation, or
       ``(ii) substantially all of the assets of, or substantially 
     all of the properties constituting a trade or business of, a 
     domestic partnership, and
       ``(B) after the acquisition, either--
       ``(i) more than 50 percent of the stock (by vote or value) 
     of the entity is held--

       ``(I) in the case of an acquisition with respect to a 
     domestic corporation, by former shareholders of the domestic 
     corporation by reason of holding stock in the domestic 
     corporation, or
       ``(II) in the case of an acquisition with respect to a 
     domestic partnership, by former partners of the domestic 
     partnership by reason of holding a capital or profits 
     interest in the domestic partnership, or

       ``(ii) the management and control of the expanded 
     affiliated group which includes the entity occurs, directly 
     or indirectly, primarily within the United States, and such 
     expanded affiliated group has significant domestic business 
     activities.
       ``(3) Exception for corporations with substantial business 
     activities in foreign country of organization.--A foreign 
     corporation described in paragraph (2) shall not be treated 
     as an inverted domestic corporation if after the acquisition 
     the expanded affiliated group which includes the entity has 
     substantial business activities in the foreign country in 
     which or under the law of which the entity is created or 
     organized when compared to the total business activities of 
     such expanded affiliated group. For purposes of subsection 
     (a)(2)(B)(iii) and the preceding sentence, the term 
     `substantial business activities' shall have the meaning 
     given such term under regulations in effect on May 8, 2014, 
     except that the Secretary may issue regulations increasing 
     the threshold percent in any of the tests under such 
     regulations for determining if business activities constitute 
     substantial business activities for purposes of this 
     paragraph.
       ``(4) Management and control.--For purposes of paragraph 
     (2)(B)(ii)--
       ``(A) In general.--The Secretary shall prescribe 
     regulations for purposes of determining cases in which the 
     management and control of an expanded affiliated group is to 
     be treated as occurring, directly or indirectly, primarily 
     within the United States. The regulations prescribed under 
     the preceding sentence shall apply to periods after May 8, 
     2014.
       ``(B) Executive officers and senior management.--Such 
     regulations shall provide that the management and control of 
     an expanded affiliated group shall be treated as occurring, 
     directly or indirectly, primarily within the United States if 
     substantially all of the executive officers and senior 
     management of the expanded affiliated group who exercise day-
     to-day responsibility for making decisions involving 
     strategic, financial, and operational policies of the 
     expanded affiliated group are based or primarily located 
     within the United States. Individuals who in fact exercise 
     such day-to-day responsibilities shall be treated as 
     executive officers and senior management regardless of their 
     title.
       ``(5) Significant domestic business activities.--For 
     purposes of paragraph (2)(B)(ii), an expanded affiliated 
     group has significant domestic business activities if at 
     least 25 percent of--
       ``(A) the employees of the group are based in the United 
     States,
       ``(B) the employee compensation incurred by the group is 
     incurred with respect to employees based in the United 
     States,
       ``(C) the assets of the group are located in the United 
     States, or
       ``(D) the income of the group is derived in the United 
     States,

     determined in the same manner as such determinations are made 
     for purposes of determining substantial business activities 
     under regulations referred to in paragraph (3) as in effect 
     on May 8, 2014, but applied by treating all references in 
     such regulations to `foreign country' and `relevant foreign 
     country' as references to `the United States'. The Secretary 
     may issue regulations decreasing the threshold percent in any 
     of the tests under such regulations for determining if 
     business activities constitute significant domestic business 
     activities for purposes of this paragraph.''.
       (b) Conforming Amendments.--
       (1) Clause (i) of section 7874(a)(2)(B) of such Code is 
     amended by striking ``after March 4, 2003,'' inserting 
     ``after March 4, 2003, and before May 9, 2014, or after May 
     8, 2016,''.

[[Page S3190]]

       (2) Subsection (c) of section 7874 of such Code is 
     amended--
       (A) in paragraph (2)--
       (i) by striking ``subsection (a)(2)(B)(ii)'' and inserting 
     ``subsections (a)(2)(B)(ii) and (b)(2)(B)(i)'', and
       (ii) by inserting ``or (b)(2)(A)'' after ``(a)(2)(B)(i)'' 
     in subparagraph (B),
       (B) in paragraph (3), by inserting ``or (b)(2)(B)(i), as 
     the case may be,'' after ``(a)(2)(B)(ii)'',
       (C) in paragraph (5), by striking ``subsection 
     (a)(2)(B)(ii)'' and inserting ``subsections (a)(2)(B)(ii) and 
     (b)(2)(B)(i)'', and
       (D) in paragraph (6), by inserting ``or inverted domestic 
     corporation, as the case may be,'' after ``surrogate foreign 
     corporation''.
       (c) Effective Date.--The amendments made by this section 
     shall apply to taxable years ending after May 8, 2014.
                                 ______
                                 
      By Mr. NELSON (for himself, Ms. Collins, Mr. Carper, Mr. 
        Grassley, and Mr. Casey):
  S. 2361. A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to 
crack down on fraud in the Medicare program to protect seniors, people 
with disabilities, and taxpayers; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. NELSON. Mr. President, I am joined today by my colleague Senator 
Collins to introduce legislation aimed at strengthening the 
government's hand in stopping Medicare fraud. Senator Collins and I 
have tried to offer some decent leadership to the Senate Special 
Committee on Aging and in the process we have heard a lot about 
Medicare and Medicaid fraud. I want to thank Senators Carper, Grassley, 
and Casey for partnering with us to sponsor this legislation we are 
introducing today.
  Earlier in the year Senator Collins and I convened a hearing of the 
aging committee to examine what government was doing to prevent 
Medicare fraud. The committee heard from law enforcement that despite 
the recent increase in prosecutions, Medicare fraud continues to run 
rampant. It is especially true in my State of Florida, where South 
Florida remains, unfortunately, ground zero for Medicare fraud.
  We also heard from the Medicare organization itself about what the 
program is doing to try to better detect and prevent con artists from 
defrauding the system.
  Then we heard from victims such as Patricia Gresko, a former 
schoolteacher from Michigan. She testified about this unbelievable scam 
where her doctor talked her into spending thousands of dollars for 
treatments for an illness she later discovered she didn't have. These 
treatments caused her to have chest pains and forced her to endure 
intravenous infusions that took hours.
  Her doctor was arrested for bilking $225 million from Medicare. This 
is what he did: falsely telling patients they had cancer--if you can 
believe that, that they had cancer--so he could bill for expensive 
chemotherapy treatments. Ms. Gresko did not have cancer, but she had to 
endure all of that.
  Today we are losing about $60 billion to $90 billion a year in 
Medicare fraud. Just last week, Federal agents arrested 90 people--50 
of them, you guessed it, from Miami--on charges they had stolen $260 
million from the Medicare Program. Fortunately, when we passed the 
Affordable Care Act, we put in provisions--some, I might say, at my 
insistence, because of ground zero being in my State--such as 
background checks, site visits for prospective Medicare providers and 
suppliers, and another one being stronger criminal and civil penalties, 
with the authority to withhold payment in law where there is a credible 
allegation of fraud. Those are just a few of the weapons in law as a 
result of the ACA.
  This recent set of arrests of 90 people on charges of Medicare fraud 
tells us something else: We have to stop playing the game of Whac-A-
Mole with Medicare criminals in trying to stamp out the fraud one bad 
actor at a time. You know what Whac-A-Mole is. You whack this creature 
on a table, and once you have whacked it, it pops right back up. So 
naturally, we talked to Sylvia Burwell, the President's nominee for 
Secretary of HHS. She echoed that last week at her confirmation hearing 
in the Finance Committee. She stated that we need to move away from the 
pay-and-chase model--which is what has happened. You have to chase them 
down. If you catch them, they pop back up again. So we need a better 
strategy.

  While we are making strides by more aggressively pursuing this kind 
of fraud, obviously more needs to be done. That is why today Senator 
Collins and I are introducing the Stop SCAMS Act. It will require 
Medicare to verify that those wishing to bill Medicare have not owned a 
company that previously defrauded the government. It is going to also 
allow private insurers and Medicare to share information about the 
potential fraudulent operators in the system.
  The bill also anticipates problems CMS may face in the future. It 
doesn't delay the rollout of the 10 new medical codes in any way--or 
shall I say what they refer to as the ICD-10 medical codes; there are a 
lot more of those medical codes--but it takes some lessons learned from 
the costly delays that have occurred with these codes and uses them to 
make the process better in the future. The legislation also requires, 
for the new medical coding systems after the ICD-10, that the agency 
assess the impact on fraud-prevention systems and do appropriate 
testing.
  Combating this fraud will continue to be one of the core missions of 
our Committee on Aging. We have taken a look at many types of fraud 
scams--Jamaican phone scams, identity theft, Social Security fraud, 
payday lending--and now we are continuing to focus on Medicare fraud 
and will continue to examine additional issues.
  Every day, Senator Collins and I hear from seniors about scams, and 
they let us know on our committee's hotline. I remind everybody: This 
hotline is there for you to report these scams--1-855-303-9470--and we 
are going to keep this committee going after these scams.
  In the meantime, Senator Collins and I hope our colleagues will join 
us in support of this legislation to try to further clamp down on 
Medicare fraud. I am so happy to have the partner I have in helping 
lead the Committee on Aging, Senator Collins.
  In closing, I would say that we really have a broad array of folks 
supporting us on this legislation: the National Health Care Anti-Fraud 
Association, America's Health Insurance Plans, Blue Cross and Blue 
Shield Association, the National Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, the 
National Insurance Crime Bureau, and Humana Insurance Company. They are 
all supporters of this legislation.
  Mr. President, I await the comments of my colleague.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine.
  Ms. COLLINS. Mr. President, I am delighted to join my friend, the 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Aging, Senator Nelson, in 
introducing legislation to help combat fraud in the Medicare Program. 
We are introducing the Stop Schemes and Crimes Against Medicare and 
Seniors Act, or the Stop SCAMS Act.
  As Senator Nelson has described, at our hearings earlier this year we 
heard absolutely appalling testimony from a woman who had to endure 
painful, 7-hour-long series of infusions for a disease she did not have 
just because her doctor was bilking the Medicare Program.
  Imagine a physician who would do that, who would subject a vulnerable 
patient to the anxiety of thinking she had a disease she did not have 
and then treat her for a disease she did not have just to collect 
Medicare dollars. It really was appalling.
  For decades the Government Accountability Office--GAO--has identified 
Medicare as being at high risk for improper payments, abuse, and fraud. 
In the year 2012 Medicare reported that it had lost more than $44 
billion in improper payments due to waste, fraud, abuse, and 
mismanagement--and that estimate may well be too low. Think what we 
could do with $44 billion to improve the quality of health care and the 
coverage we are providing to our seniors or to reduce our unsustainable 
national debt. This is simply unacceptable.
  The loss of these funds not only compromises the financial integrity 
and increases the costs of the Medicare Program, but it also undermines 
our ability to provide needed health care services to the more than 54 
million older and disabled Americans who depend on this vital program.
  Back in the late 1990s when I was chairman of the Permanent 
Subcommittee on Investigations, we held a series of hearings to examine 
fraud in

[[Page S3191]]

the Medicare Program. We identified the dangerous trend of an 
increasing number of completely bogus providers entering the system 
with the sole and explicit purpose of robbing it. One of our witnesses 
actually testified that he went into Medicare fraud because it was 
easier and safer than dealing in drugs; he could make a lot more money 
at far less risk of being caught.
  Our hearings led to the adoption of some safeguards and better 
internal controls. But many years later what our continuing hearings 
have demonstrated is that unscrupulous individuals are always adopting 
and seeking out new ways to rip off the system. They seem to be always 
one step ahead of the authorities.
  I do wish to emphasize an extremely important point; that is, the 
vast majority of medical professionals are caring, dedicated health 
care providers whose top priority is the welfare of their patients.
  When we were investigating Medicare fraud in the late 1990s, what we 
found were a whole lot of individuals posing as health care providers 
who had no medical training whatsoever. I remember one memorable case 
where, had there been a site visit, it would have been discovered that 
this bogus provider had an office in the middle of the runway of the 
Miami airport. But, unfortunately, back then there were no site visits.
  Health care providers--the true professionals--are the ones who are 
most appalled by the unscrupulous bandits who take advantage of 
weaknesses in the Medicare Program to bleed billions of dollars from 
the program.
  As I indicated, we have made some progress over the years in the 
battle against Medicare fraud since I chaired those hearings. 
Unfortunately, however, there is no line item in the budget titled 
``waste, fraud, and abuse'' that we can simply strike to eliminate this 
problem and solve it once and for all.
  The task of ferreting out wasteful and fraudulent spending is made 
all the more difficult by the ingenuity of the scam artists, who 
continually adopt new methods of ripping off both the Medicare and the 
Medicaid Programs.
  It is clear, as my distinguished chairman indicated, that we must do 
more than shift from a pay-and-chase strategy to combat Medicare fraud 
to one that prevents the harm from ever occurring in the first place. 
That is what the bipartisan bill we are introducing today would do.
  Among other provisions, our legislation would require Medicare to 
verify health care provider ownership interests using other databases 
before new health care providers are allowed to enroll in the program. 
That is an upfront control that we can and should implement. Currently, 
Medicare relies on self-reported information. As a consequence, 
providers who previously had an ownership interest in an organization 
that defrauded Medicare can potentially get back into the program by 
simply using different names and failing to disclose their interest in 
the previous organization or practice.
  Our legislation would also allow private insurers to share 
information about potentially fraudulent providers with Medicare and 
with each other to prevent further health care fraud.
  It would also allow the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission to make 
recommendations to us regarding fraud prevention, and our bill would 
require the Medicare Program to develop a strategy for more accurately 
and reliably estimating how many dollars are lost each year to fraud.
  As the chairman indicated, our legislation is endorsed by a wide 
variety of organizations, including the National Health Care Anti-Fraud 
Association, the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, Humana, 
America's Health Insurance Plans, and the Coalition Against Insurance 
Fraud.
  I urge all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in 
cosponsoring this important bill--legislation that I believe really can 
make a difference. I hope this is a bill we can move quickly. It is a 
commonsense bill. It will save taxpayer and beneficiary dollars, and it 
will help to curb the excessive fraud, the unacceptable fraud that is 
depleting dollars from a program--the Medicare Program--that is already 
under financial strain.
  So let's move this bill. Let's send it to the House and on to the 
President for his signature as soon as possible.
  Mr. President, I again commend the Senator from Florida for his 
leadership. It has been a great pleasure to work with him on this 
important issue.

                          ____________________