Jim Ramstad: “today I rise in frustration, frustration with the government agency that may even be more unpopular than the IRS, if you…”

“today I rise in frustration, frustration with the government agency that may even be more unpopular than the IRS, if you can believe it. My friends on the Health Subcommittee of Ways and Means and many other colleagues on both sides of the aisle know exactly who I am talking about, the Healthcare Financing Administration, or HCFA. Mr. Speaker, on Friday of this week our Health Subcommittee will be holding a hearing on refinements to the Balanced Budget Amendment, or BBA. As we plan for this hearing, I hope the administration will not appear before us again in the subcommittee and insult our intelligence. I will be asking some tough questions about their handling of the Medicare program recently, and I hope I do not hear that the agency is unable to address the concerns we are hearing about from seniors across the Nation, and also from Medicare providers, because the agency's hands are completely tied by prescriptive BBA language. That is the constant refrain we get from HCFA, the agency's hands are completely tied by prescriptive BBA language.”