I appreciate the fact the administration is highlighting that. I think information, sunlight is probably the best cure there.

I look at China really as a 1.2 billion person opportunity for the United States.

So when we go about our rebalancing, then are we very specifically trying to counter those buildups?

What area, just in general, of buildup is of greatest concern to the United States? Is it their naval buildup?

As long as we are talking about different types of certification, do you have the statistics on how many suppliers there are?

I agree with you that fraud and abuse of the system is costly to taxpayers and I am looking forward to working with you on an ongoing basis to continue to hold hearings like this to try and get some control over these systems, over some of…

Again, that is going to be, I am afraid, another government program that may not be particularly efficient in terms of how the money is spent.

I think what we really need to do is work together and work with CMS to get the answer to your question in terms of what percentage really is fraud related?

What we are looking at right now in terms of the health care law is when it was originally passed, it was going to cost a trillion dollars over 10 years.

But, again, it is not speaking to the benefit of utilizing more of a private sector model, where individuals have more skin in the game or more control over what they are spending, making wise consumer choices, versus the government just…

I appreciate the numbers that you were throwing out, $27.5 billion saved estimated over the next 10 years, but that is $2.7 billion divided by more than $700 billion. That is 0.35 percent. It is better than nothing, but it is not much…

The current budget window is about $1.7 trillion. And when it really kicks in 2016, it will cost about $2.4 trillion over 10 years.

I guess maybe the first lesson learned here is Congress is not particularly good or efficient at price fixing.

How do you prevent that going forward? It is a very difficult issue.

OK. So what is the sample size on the CERT?

No, there is a plethora of data out there. You have the Internet now. This is easy to do, to actually figure out what is a fair price to pay for any product nowadays. It has never been easier. It is incredibly simple.

So why is that not caught in the original 17, or 14 to 30 days?

As Senator Johnson mentioned in his opening statement...

the consumer of the product, by and large, does not care what something costs because they really do not have that much skin in the game.

Is that 100 percent of CMS claims paid through the MAC?

It is totally outdated now.

First of all, we certainly agree that any level of improper payment is not acceptable, and certainly a two-thirds rate of improper payments is not acceptable.

Thank you, Chairman.

It would not be a valid argument, for example, to argue that Congress should ignore allegations that the Internal Revenue Service signaled out tea party groups.

When they initially estimated how much Medicare would cost the American taxpayer, they projected about 25 years and they said that Medicare would cost $12 billion in the year 1990. In fact, it ended up costing $110 billion, nine times the…