I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about the impact this terrible crisis is having on older Americans.

We are also grateful to Chairman Collins, who supports the elimination of the IMD exclusion.

It is clear there is a very serious problem with outlier prescribers.

If we start raising taxes, if we start layering more and more regulations like we have been the last 10 years, we are going to be growing at half what we are growing at now.

It is an honor for me to come to the meeting and join my colleague, Senator Collins in introducing Emory Rounds.

Thank you. And let me just remind you that it rains far less often in Maine than it does in Washington State.

In Maine, we are reaching that aging milestone faster than most states. Within the next 2 years, our seniors will outnumber our children, 15 years ahead of the national projections.

Yesterday, I introduced a bill with Senator Casey, the Geriatrics Workforce Improvement Act, which would reauthorize the GWEP programs and reinstate the Geriatric Academic Career Awards program.

One of the main metrics for gauging our progress in developing a health care workforce to care for older adults is a certification in geriatrics.

Obviously, we want to build a workforce to provide geriatric care and ensure that older adults, and their families in rural America, are provided with the resources that they need to care for aging loved ones.

These programs work.

Here is why this matters, Dr. Clancy, and everybody here. Is that we have a situation where there is an inherent conflict of interest...

Now, up in Maine, where I come from, that is a conflict of interest. And here is why that matters.

I want to see the data. I want to see what grants were issued, who did the research, how much money for the research, how much money for the overhead, who these investigators are, and what their record is of awarding that administrative…

We are all responsible for taking care of our veterans.

What I would like to see is every grant that was awarded by the VA, by the NIH, by the DoD...

If we are looking for research on veterans who have problems, and we have mountains of data on what their ailments are, it would make sense to me that we use that information.

I have in front of me the May report of the Inspector General at HHS.