On the recordMay 20, 2014
I am joined today by my colleague Senator Collins to introduce legislation aimed at strengthening the government's hand in stopping Medicare fraud. Senator Collins and I have tried to offer some decent leadership to the Senate Special Committee on Aging and in the process we have heard a lot about Medicare and Medicaid fraud. I want to thank Senators Carper, Grassley, and Casey for partnering with us to sponsor this legislation we are introducing today. Earlier in the year Senator Collins and I convened a hearing of the aging committee to examine what government was doing to prevent Medicare fraud. The committee heard from law enforcement that despite the recent increase in prosecutions, Medicare fraud continues to run rampant. It is especially true in my State of Florida, where South Florida remains, unfortunately, ground zero for Medicare fraud. We also heard from the Medicare organization itself about what the program is doing to try to better detect and prevent con artists from defrauding the system. Then we heard from victims such as Patricia Gresko, a former schoolteacher from Michigan. She testified about this unbelievable scam where her doctor talked her into spending thousands of dollars for treatments for an illness she later discovered she didn't have. These treatments caused her to have chest pains and forced her to endure intravenous infusions that took hours. Her doctor was arrested for bilking $225 million from Medicare.…
