Christopher Shays: “I might say to the gentleman before I introduce her that one of the reasons we have these abuses is the way that…”

“I might say to the gentleman before I introduce her that one of the reasons we have these abuses is the way that Medicare pays the bill is the bills are submitted and paid for and then after the fact, they are reviewed, basically 1 percent of the billings and 4 percent of the total billing costs. The money has already been paid out. Then they are asking the money to be returned. It is a crazy system. I am going to introduce the gentlewoman from Connecticut [Mrs. Johnson]. We are talking about the fact that our trustees have pointed out that Medicare is losing $35 million a day and that next year it is going to lose $55 million and the year after $78 million and the year after that, each day, $103 million, the year after that, in the fifth year of our plan, what we want to prevent from happening, in losing $134 million. Yet under our plan last year which the gentlewoman played the central role in, she made sure that we spent 60 percent more on Medicare under the life of the plan, and on a per-person basis, 50 percent more. You know the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] and I were just marveling at the fact that only in Washington when you spend 50 percent more per beneficiary would someone call it a cut.”