Frank Riggs: “Let me reclaim my time and state to the gentleman again so he is absolutely clear on this point, we have made, I think…”

“Let me reclaim my time and state to the gentleman again so he is absolutely clear on this point, we have made, I think emphatically clear to the American people from day one that anyone presently in the Medicare Program under the traditional fee-for-service arrangement could stay in that program. That is explicitly built into the legislation. I also want to make the point, then I am going to yield to the gentleman from Georgia, and I hope the gentleman will stay because I will yield him more time, but I also want to point out that the Democrat plan does not contain the same incentives for rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse, not the same aggressive incentives that ours have, including a financial incentive to those Medicare recipients who do report waste, fraud, and abuse in the system, and I think we all know that there is rampant waste, fraud, and abuse, almost endemic to the system. Second, it does not provide the same flexibility in choices that we have offered Medicare recipients in our plan.”