Monday, April 8, 2013
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa gave a floor speech this afternoon on his concerns that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has loose controls and poor records of the communication of non-public information regarding policy decisions affecting Medicare and Medicaid. These policies govern the distribution of hundreds of billions of tax dollars. Any advance, non-public information is of great interest to the financial markets and the growing political intelligence-gathering industry. Grassley is probing how a private firm had information on a key agency decision on Medicare Advantage payments last week prior to the agency's announcement, causing a major spike in key health care company stocks.
Also today, Grassley wrote to the firm involved in the Medicare Advantage incident, asking a series of questions about the firm's role. Grassley's letter to Height Securities is available here.
The text of his floor speech is available here. The video is available on cspan.org.
Grassley's letter to the acting CMS administrator on the issue is available here. The acting administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, comes before the Finance Committee on Tuesday for a hearing on her nomination to serve as permanent administrator.
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