Pete Stark: “The other issue of data banks, Mr. Speaker, is in the field of insurance regulation. This data bank was designed to find…”

“The other issue of data banks, Mr. Speaker, is in the field of insurance regulation. This data bank was designed to find a correlation between private insurance that an employee might have and Medicare. We have further need for a data bank that would deal with the question of selling insurance that is duplicative. This is a rule that we have had to protect seniors, and it is being eliminated by the Republican Medicare bill. The sales rules are also being eliminated. Now, without keeping a data bank on the unscrupulous sales practices of health insurers who sell Medigap, and allowing these duplicative policies to reappear, we will have no way of knowing how much harm is being done to the seniors. We estimate that several billions of dollars were paid prior to our passing the bill which eliminated duplicative Medigap sales to seniors, but we have not kept that data bank, assuming that those rules would be affected. Without any prejudice to the ability to reinstate a data bank, I think it is necessary to point out that these seniors will need protection from the unscrupulous insurance agency and this bill----”