[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10688-10689]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   PAYMENTS TO MEDICARE BENEFICIARIES

  (Mr. MURPHY of New York asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. MURPHY of New York. Today we're seeing the implementation of one 
of the things in the health care reform bill: payments of $250 to help 
our seniors with the doughnut hole coverage. One of the things that's 
also going on that most Americans don't know about is fundamental 
reforms with respect to

[[Page 10689]]

waste and fraud in the Medicare system. Our efforts on that front have 
been dramatically improved by things that were in the health care bill 
that was passed earlier this year, giving Medicare the power to do 
commonsense things that any small business in America would do, do a 
better job of checking new providers as they come into Medicare, do a 
better job of putting people on probation and checking up on them in 
that first year to make sure they are not abusing our system.
  There is a rampant problem with waste, fraud and abuse in our 
Medicare system. The health care bill we passed earlier this year is 
making steps to bring that into check. Today we had a hearing here in 
Congress about other things that we can do. And I testified about my 
legislation to put more tools in the hands of our law enforcement 
professionals and CMS to cut down on the waste and fraud in Medicare. I 
look forward to continuing to work on this and making sure that we use 
the dollars in Medicare to provide health benefits to our seniors, not 
allow criminals to run rampant.

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