Political Quotes

“I will start with the public provider regulation. We know that in the past, many states used to recycle Federal health care dollars they paid to their hospitals to use for any number of purposes beyond health care. It was an embarrassing scam that several administrations tried to limit. This administration has gone a long way towards cleaning that up and the oversight of payments to public providers is part of that effort. I have taken issue at times with the administration's methods. I don't believe they have their public provider definition right in the current regulation. That said, simply making the CMS regulation go away opens the door for a return to the wasteful, inappropriate spending of the past. Quoting from the CRS report, ``Under certain circumstances, a state can require providers to transfer funds to the state and because a provider's Medicaid receipts are indistinguishable from other receipts, effectively a portion of Medicaid payments may be included in those transfers.'' Intergovernmental transfers do have a legitimate role, but it is critical that states have a clear, correct understanding of what is a legitimate transfer and what is not. If the regulation goes away, those lines will still not be adequately defined.”