James Lankford

Okay. Dr. Agrawal, you mentioned as well about good actors in this, the possibility--and I heard a lot of, you know, variances of that to put it in the maybe is possible.

Let me just run through some quick questions, and then we are nearing the end. So the end is near.

I just want to tell you about the last year of my life, when my family business went out of business and closed down a company and laid off employees.

Good actors we want to keep. Our seniors need to know, 'In my neighborhood, in my community, in my town, in my county, there is a good actor that is there.'

Even for the high-risk areas where there is a moratorium, some of those areas may have a deficiency of a number of good companies that are actually providing.

So 2 more years still left of that is what you are saying or----

It is simply unacceptable to deal with the problem by denying the providers due process.

The volume of audits has led to a huge backlog in appeals for providers.

These audits are threatening to put them out of business.

The well-intentioned efforts of CMS to accomplish that goal are not working and are badly in need of reform.

I agree that combatting Medicare waste and fraud is a critical goal.

Can you give me--is it a week or is it a decade?

That doesn't answer a 'when,' does it?

Can I just follow up on that as well? As of when? When will that occur?

We're also advocates to make sure that we don't lose providers, that our seniors still have access to multiple providers.

Now, you will find no greater advocates for the taxpayers and going after fraud than us at this panel.

I could name you several dozen individual providers in my district that would beg to differ on that statement.

So how are they notified, then, if one of them does it, or could two of them do it in the course of a year or could three?

Our duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee is to protect these rights.

Could a provider get a review from all four of those different folks, different cases, but that provider itself get reviews from four different groups of people from Medicare during the course?

Is it possible that all four of them will make requests during the course of a year to pull a file?

My observations were that they were still looking for more decisions.

So the four things the White House put out, three of them are factually not true, and one of them was a promise that is still unkept.

There was a lot of back and forth, yes, sir.

If you went to Libya right now, would you be okay if one of the local militias guarded your front door?