Jim McDermott

God, it sounds like the game is over, it is all--it is hopeless.

It really is a disappointing choice on my Republican colleagues' part, because they should accept that the ACA is working.

Our Republican colleagues have called us here this morning once again to try to tear down the Affordable Care Act.

Not as common. Give me numbers here.

If she ran into a CASA worker who said--and she said, I don't think I should be on this medication, can I get off it, can you help me get off it, and they called you--can they call you?

The RACs operate like the fishermen in my district. They go out and throw a great big net.

The idea of that is, in fact, to make people pay more out of pocket on the assumption that they will be more careful healthcare consumers.

Simplifying the program, a complex Medicare program would be helpful.

There was a Senator by the name of Daniel Patrick Moynihan who said there are a lot of simple answers around but we need a great complexifier.

Only 7 percent are overturned.

From a revenue standpoint. Because we said it doesn't make any difference how they are treated as people and as patients, so the only difference is how much money the hospital makes off of it; is that correct?

So they are getting 70 percent more if they bill them as an inpatient.

So then the difference is in the payment that is received by the hospital or that the patient has to make depending on which category they are in; is that correct?

From a patient's standpoint you walk into the emergency room or whatever, and you get put in one of these statuses or the other.

I think everyone in this room would agree that protecting Medicare as a bedrock institution of American life, thereby serving the greater good, does require some sacrifice.

Unlike some of my Republican counterparts, I believe some level of regulation is necessary to ensure that we protect Medicare's finite resources for future generations.

This hearing today is really about serving the greater good.

The three midnight rule is a problem considering how medicine is practiced today.

You know what we are trying to do. How would you design what we should do at this point?

I want us to try and stop it before it starts.

Because I think that, when there is this much money on the table as there is in health care today, it is bound to attract some folks who don't have the best interests of the patients or the government or the taxpayers at heart.

This type of fraud is just as detrimental to our beneficiaries as to the solvency of the Medicare trust fund.

One of the ways you can save money is don't give care.

This case-by-case thing--as we spread the Accountable Care Act over the country, they are going to have endless case-by-case things, and I think it ought to be done systematically.

Rather than issue a case-by-case advisory opinion, it seems to me that more structure should be put in place around such arrangements.