Frank Pallone: “I wanted to point out another example of what you are talking about too. It has also come to light over the Thanksgiving…”

“I wanted to point out another example of what you are talking about too. It has also come to light over the Thanksgiving recess, and this is the people within the Department that were drafting the legislation, as you know, the Federal Government official who runs Medicare and was very much involved in drafting the legislation to put this bill in place, Tom Scully, announced during the break, during the Thanksgiving recess that he was leaving the Medicare program to go into the private sector. And there were serious questions about his whole involvement in this because basically he had been looking for a job in the private industry for something like 6 months. There is an article that was in the December 3 New York Times where it said that Mr. Scully, this is the Medicare administrator, had made no secret of the fact that he had been looking for jobs outside the government for more than 6 months even as he spent hundreds of hours in closed sessions with House and Senate negotiators working out countless details of the legislation. Now, again, there are so many conflicts of interest with this administration, it is just unbelievable.”