Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, this amendment would ensure that health care reform costs are lowered by this piece of legislation. If independent actuaries for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services cannot certify that this health care reform legislation lowers national health expenditures, this bill will not go into effect.

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Mr. CORNYN. Madam President, if you raise taxes enough and if you cut Medicare enough, you might be able to claim, through phony bookkeeping, that somehow this cuts the deficit. The administration's own actuaries have concluded this law will raise health care costs. That is why it is important we pass this amendment, so that the central purpose of this legislation--to bend the cost curve down--is actually realized.

I urge colleagues to support the amendment.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, this amendment will lower the deficit while attacking the scourge of fraud and waste in our Medicaid Program. The $3.4 trillion Medicaid Program is riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, and improper repayment rates that range roughly in the 10-percent range for the Nation. Some States and some cities are even worse.

In Washington, DC, 19.3 percent of Medicaid payments are classified by Health and Human Services as improper payments. In Oregon, one out of every five people on Medicaid is not even eligible to be on Medicaid. That is 20 percent.

This amendment takes the $434 billion that we are putting into the health care coverage, much of it in Medicaid, and it provides a financial incentive for the States to reduce their improper payment rates.

Since the Medicaid expansion does not go into effect until 2014, this provides a more than adequate period of time for the States to comply with bringing their improper payment rates down under Medicaid and thus to avoid any penalty under this amendment.

I ask my colleagues for their consideration.

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