Putting Patients First By Strengthening Provider Accountability in Feca Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. MACKENZIE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 8823, the Putting Patients First By Strengthening Provider Accountability in FECA Act, which I am leading alongside my colleague, Representative Omar.

H.R. 8823 amends the FECA program, or the Federal Employees Compensation Act, to codify the Department of Labor's ability to suspend payments to medical care providers who have been convicted of fraud with respect to this program.

Each year, the FECA program provides benefits to hundreds of thousands of injured Federal workers. This is their system, and they deserve for it to operate efficiently, reliably, and effectively. That requires us to establish commonsense protections against bad actors who would abuse FECA and rip off the Federal workers in the process.

Throughout this year, we have heard numerous concerning reports of providers targeting Federal programs with fraudulent schemes, and FECA is no exception.

As chair of the Workforce Protections Subcommittee, I held a hearing in which we heard from those who testified about fraud costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, money that could have gone toward providing quality care to Federal workers who were injured.

This is unacceptable. Every dollar that goes to a fraudulent provider is one less dollar going toward providing high-quality medical care to an injured Federal worker. That is why when a provider is convicted of fraud, the Department of Labor should have clear authority to shut down the flow of taxpayer dollars that was going into their pockets.

Currently, DOL has the authority to suspend payments to medical providers who are convicted of fraudulent activity. This authority has not been codified and could be rescinded at any time. When it comes to protecting taxpayers and injured workers, our laws must be clear: No dollars should go to fraudulent providers now or at any point in the future.

That is why H.R. 8823 gives DOL the permanent authority to block bad actors from hijacking the system that Federal workers rely on. H.R. 8823 does not aim to restrict access to medical care for our injured Federal employees. Instead, this bill helps ensure that care is only delivered by providers who meet clear standards of professional and ethical conduct.

It is time that we give taxpayers and Federal workers the commonsense, bipartisan protections that they deserve. That is why I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill.

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