By Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Finance Committee, said Thursday that GOP lawmakers are looking at changes to Medicare to root out waste, fraud and abuse.
Republican senators are taking a closer look at finding savings in Medicare to increase the total amount of deficit reduction in President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” Tillis said a day after the Finance panel met with Trump at the White House.
The Congressional Budget Office released a report this week estimating that the House-passed 1,116-page bill would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Tillis said overhauling systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) could save a substantial amount of money without impacting Medicare benefits, which Trump has said should not be cut.
He said legislation sponsored by Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) to reduce Medicare Advantage overpayments could be included in the bigger bill.
“Waste, fraud and abuse, you’ve got upcoding,” Tillis said. “Even in the plumbing of CMS — and by that I mean, procurement, matching up contracts, duplicate payments — there are a number of things that I think that we could find that never touch a beneficiary of Medicare or Medicaid that we’re going to go after.”
Tillis said there are “a number” of things that could be reformed under the CMS’s jurisdiction.
“In the plumbing of CMS, if you take look at contracting, contract execution, contract compliance, duplicate payments, there are a number of things that haven’t been touched by the prior administration,” he said.
He said Cassidy has “a very well thought out plan” to root out waste in Medicare Advantage.
“Bill is a physician, wants to make sure that we’re maintaining quality care, and I think he’s done a very, very good job of highlighting the opportunity for hundreds of billions of dollars in savings,” he added.
Tillis said “you could do those provisions” in the “big, beautiful bill,” which Senate Republicans are trying to get to Trump’s desk by July 4.
“It’s basically CMS modernization,” he said.