Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. MacArthur) Mr. MacARTHUR. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. As co-chair of the Bipartisan Heroin Task Force, I have spent a lot of my time working on this opioid crisis. Congress must do everything we can to ensure that our communities have the resources for prevention, treatment, and enforcement. My district is also home to 140,000 seniors, among the highest in the country. As we work together in a bipartisan way to fight this epidemic, we cannot forget about our seniors and how this crisis affects them. More than 42 million Americans get their prescription drugs through Medicare. They rely on Medicare part D, the prescription drug program, for the drugs that they need. A 2017 report by the HHS Office of the Inspector General found that 500,000 Medicare part D beneficiaries received high amounts of opioids. High means in excess of what the manufacturer and CDC recommend--in other words, dangerous amounts. Too many senior communities are being flooded with opioids. We must protect our seniors, and that means we need to protect Medicare from those who would abuse it. We need to fight the fraudulent abuse of Medicare by people who do not have seniors' best interests at heart. In some cases, seniors are having their Medicare numbers stolen and then used to fraudulently bill Medicare for opioids.…”