So at least on a short-term basis, we'd have to continue to rob Peter to pay Paul?

Getting our budget deficit under control is not going to be an easy task. It will require tough choices and discipline.

The idea of post-payment review and recovery audits are all sensible approaches, but one of the things that we are not doing is payment reform.

Unfortunately, until we put market discipline into the health care system, waste and fraud will continue to be a reality in Medicare and Medicaid.

There has to be a price to pay for that, not just paying back the money, but a greater price than that.

Those three estimates, as Senator Carper pointed out, are roughly about 50 percent of that $72 billion in improper payments.

Thank you so much. Ms. Taylor, you are recognized.

Would you say that number again, that last sentence.

We advocate strengthening enrollment standards and making participation in the Federal health care programs a privilege, not a right.

Thank you for that excellent testimony.

Senator Coburn and I worked on changes to the Improper Payments Act.

I think one of the things we did in Sarbanes-Oxley is literally the CEO of the company, when a company verifies or certifies that they have scrubbed their books, they have done the right thing. The CEO has to sign his or her name on the…

We need to find ways to have them actually come forward and tell us they found a problem.

What can we do at the Congressional level, this Subcommittee, this Committee, the Senate, the House, to address some of those vulnerabilities?

I think one of the better initiatives that came out of the George W. Bush Administration was the idea of the Improper Payments Information Act.

We need to work even harder.

I think it will take such a sustained commitment for there to be real progress in this area.

Good. Thank you.