I, too, urge all Members to support this critical legislation. It has strong bipartisan support. It is very important. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

I have no other speakers, and I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

We have just 3 days until the sequestration cuts take effect. Instead of being here in Washington working to reach an agreement, the President is off again on the campaign trail. Giving speeches in front of adoring crowds is not going to…

CMS estimates that out of that $555 billion, $44 billion--nearly 8 percent--were improper payments.

We are now seeing the impact of provisions in the Affordable Care Act that help us move away from the traditional 'pay and chase' approach to a more proactive approach designed to prevent fraud before it occurs.

Medicare has been on the Government Accountability Office's high-risk list continuously since GAO began designating programs as high risk in 1990.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Fighting fraud is critical to both of these and critical to being responsible stewards of taxpayers' dollars, an issue where we should be able to achieve bipartisan consensus.

I look forward to hearing from our GAO witnesses what areas in the Medicare and Medicaid programs are most vulnerable to fraud and their recommendations to combat improper payments.

These are necessary and non-negotiable costs that we all want to encourage health plans to incur.

According to data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in 2011, Medicare spending accounted for 21 percent of total national health expenditures.

In 2012, Medicare spent approximately $555 billion caring for more than 49 million beneficiaries.

I haven't seen one indication that CMS truly knows how much it loses each year much less whether a majority of these payments are not usually fraudulent.

How can we protect the most vulnerable in our society if we don't protect the integrity of the system that was intended to serve them?

The MLR regulations' treatment of fraud prevention expenses works at cross purposes with efforts by the Federal Government.

Finally, members from both sides of the aisle have stated that Congress should promote policies that encourage young people to purchase health coverage.

We cannot rest on our laurels and be satisfied with the current successes in fraud fighting.

the history certainly has been of a predominantly pay-and-chase approach, and that is what the Fraud Prevention System is changing

I would rather it be at $2,000 but $4,000 is a lot better than $4 million.

The subcommittee will come to order.

I have dedicated much of my career in Congress to improving the quality and efficiency of both the Medicare and Medicaid programs.

Again, credit card companies figured this out 25 years ago, and it seems like we ought to be farther along than we are now.

We also need to ensure that the public and private sectors are collaborating, because we know that schemes that affect programs like Medicare and Medicaid often are also perpetrated against private payers as well.

Now, there remains significant interest in Congress about antifraud efforts in Medicare and Medicaid.

So the answer is no?