Susan Collins

I want to take this opportunity to personally thank you for your leadership of this committee, which has been tremendous.

Those are terrible cases, because not only is there unnecessary suffering, but there is greater expense to the system in the long run.

A very logical assumption to make.

To expect a beneficiary to understand whether or not they have been in a hospital bed as an inpatient versus in observation status is just absurd.

I just cannot imagine anyone who is ill and has been put into a hospital bed making a distinction or even realizing there is a distinction between being in inpatient status or in observation status.

What we really need to do with the Medicare program to reduce improper payments, whether it is fraud or mistakes, is to have better controls up front and more collaboration with stakeholders up front rather than doing the pay-and-chase…

It is clear that they are producing unintended consequences because of the way the incentive structure is set up.

I want to start my questioning with Dr. Sheehy and Ms. Borgstrom.

Thank you very much for your testimony.

I appreciate you calling this hearing to highlight the increasing use of hospital observation stays and the financial implications for Medicare patients and their families.

There is a very robust study proposed in Senator Collins' amendment that Ms. Claybrook indicated is best exercised with the current rule in place in order to capture the full data.

Certainly, we want to look at the testimony today.

I cannot imagine why anyone would want to suspend rules which are in place to ensure the safety of everyone on the road by mitigating truck driver fatigue.

I think the best argument to be made there is it puts more people on the road during the daylight hours.

Clearly, we are talking a lot right now as we finish up this particular week in the Congress about transportation funding.

Well, the public is reporting, if you have got nine million scams reported to the FTC, including 127,000 imposter scams just this year.

Until we put in jail a lot of people who are committing these scams, we are not going to see real progress.

I want to thank you for calling this hearing to explore once again the dangers posed by con artists looking to swindle older Americans out of their life savings.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I apologize for being a few minutes late. Like you, I am trying to balance a lot of different commitments today.

As a global humanitarian leader, the United States must respond to this crisis in a thoughtful and calculated manner thoroughly consistent with international refugee law and American principles of due process.

This is not a complete plan, to me. What are missing are three things.

Congress must immediately increase funding to ORR for fiscal year 2014 so that the influx of children at the border is not paid for by the refugees from Iraq, Syria, Eritrea, Sudan, and Ukraine and elsewhere who have been generously…

We cannot sit back and let this situation grow worse, as it does day by day.

If we want an extraordinary response to an extraordinary problem, why don't we consider using the National Guard?

The United States has both a security and moral obligation to help resolve this emergency.