Cliff Stearns Puts Medicaid Fraud and Floridians on Capitol Hill's Center Stage

Medicaid will be on center stage on Capitol Hill on Wednesday when Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns, the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee under the umbrella of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will examine how fraud impacts the program -- and how much it costs taxpayers.

Mandatory spending on Medicare and Medicaid will be more than $650 billion this year, said Stearns on Monday.According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), the size and complexity of the Medicare program made it inherently susceptible to improper payments and serious management challenges, and an estimate puts the cost at as much as $60 billion a year. In addition, in 2011 the GAO designated Medicare and Medicaid as high-risk programs due to waste, fraud, and abuse. In this hearing, we will look at how much is lost in these programs, the reasons behind these extensive costs, and how to combat these losses.

Stearns will be leading the subcommittee in tackling the issue on Wednesday morning and there will be a distinctly Florida feel to the event. Stearns announced on Monday that the subcommittee will hear from six witnesses, some of whom are familiar faces in the Sunshine State.

The subcommittee will hear from John Spiegel, the director of Medicare Program Integrity at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS); Kathleen King from the Health Care Division of the federalGAO; and Deputy Inspector General for Investigations GeraldRoy of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

There will also be three witnesses with Florida ties speaking to the subcommittee. Omar Perez from the Miami Regional Office of the HHS Office of the Inspector General will be testifying before the subcommittee. So will R. Alex Acosta, the former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida who is currently serving as the dean of the Florida International University College of Law. Craig Smith, who had served as general counsel for the states Agency for Health Care Administration, will also be speaking before the subcommittee.

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