[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 13071]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



         MEDICARE EDUCATION AND REGULATORY FAIRNESS ACT OF 2001

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. DANNY K. DAVIS

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 11, 2001

  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I'd like to preface my comments 
by saying that Medicare is a wonderful program. Since the enactment of 
Medicare in 1965, seniors and disabled individuals have had better 
access to physicians and more access to life-saving treatments. And in 
comparison to managed care, Medicare is also extremely cost-effective. 
It's an under-appreciated fact that Medicare is administrated for just 
two cents on the dollar, while managed care is typically administrated 
at a rate twelve times greater.
  Still, it's absolutely amazing how much bureaucratic red tape you can 
generate for two cents on the dollar. This is 500 sheets of paper. If 
you write double-sided, it's 1000 pages. Now, if you imagine 110 of 
these stacks piled on top of each other, you begin to have an idea of 
how complicated Medicare is. 110,000 pages of regulations--that's over 
three times the length of the U.S. tax code.
  Every month, physicians receive pages upon pages from their Medicare 
carriers describing ever-changing policies and regulations. Keeping 
track of everything is frankly impossible. Yet, if a physician doesn't 
follow one of the rules, no matter how unintentionally, he or she can 
be subjected to the draconian process of a Medicare audit. Currently, 
when carriers identify an alleged physician billing error, they can 
``extrapolate'' the single identified error to the physician's other 
claims. This would be like the IRS identifying an error on your most 
recent tax return, and then assuming that you made that error on every 
tax return you ever filed.
  The ``Medicare Education and Regulatory Fairness Act of 2001'' is a 
common-sense piece of legislation that addresses this injustice, as 
well as many others. This act will guarantee that physicians receive 
the same due process that we guarantee all our citizens. If this alone 
were the only virtue of this bill, it would still be worth passing. But 
there is a larger significance here that extends beyond physicians, and 
it can be summarized with a simple equation: Less time spent on 
paperwork means more time spent on patient care. Therefore, as much as 
physicians will benefit from this legislation, let us always keep in 
mind that the true beneficiaries are the patients.

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