Gerry Connolly

It is quite a spectacle to have five members of the Commission arguing about management style before a committee of Congress.

Reducing Medicaid improper payments contributes directly to the long-term health of these essential health care programs.

As Mr. West suggests in his testimony, consider harsher punishment for the management of such companies.

Perhaps we should consider more stringent punishments for companies and individuals who systematically defraud Medicaid.

I look forward to learning more from Ms. Brice-Smith and Mr. Cantrell about what CMS is doing to prevent such negligences from occurring in the future.

I applaud the tireless efforts of Mr. Richard West.

I am totally opposed to fraudulent practices in medicine, especially involving the most vulnerable.

Simply put, fighting health care fraud is good fiscal policy.

I would not abandon the OAS, anyhow.

The United States was not forthcoming.

Most of those victims, female victims, tragically are also victims of sexual trafficking; is that not correct?

Most of the victims, sadly, tragically, of human trafficking are female; is that not correct?

So it is presumably not about abortion.

I think our fears about that, if they existed before this hearing, can now be allayed.

And did you indicate that, in this particular case, the Catholic Bishops indicated they would not provide such services?

And did you indicate that one of the needs they have is family planning services, the wide array, including contraception, prevention and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases that, obviously, unfortunately, tragically, come with the…

No member of this committee or of the body, the Congress, can purport to speak for the Catholic Church or for all Catholics.

I am alarmed that the minority was denied witnesses; I am alarmed that new documents at the last minute are entered in the record.

Okay. So we have pretty much put to rest whether there is a Catholic bias in this administration. There isn't.

The idea that there is some systematic attempt to--a bias implemented against the Catholic Church or Catholic entities is a libel and not true.

I must say that listening to some opine on this subject... one is a little alarmed that some would become a latter-day Torquemada.

I don't leave this hearing with any confidence that the program in front of us with $1 billion being planned in expenditures over the next several years has the slightest chance of being effective.

The PDP as a hopeless waste of money, your money, American money.

We shouldn't spend a dime, frankly, without some rigorous metrics and milestones that are efficacious, that are meaningful.

If you can't measure it, it is not real as far as I am concerned.