Diana DeGette

The Affordable Care Act is not going anywhere.

I think it is really disappointing that Members of Congress would brag about taking health care away from vulnerable Americans.

I think it is something we should do every year about this same time.

I appreciate the efforts of all of the agencies, but I am still concerned about some of the market forces.

Part of the problem is it is a market-based technology?

But the other problem, as we have seen in past hearings, is that if you have some kind of pandemic, then the additional problem to the time it takes to grow the virus in the eggs is the egg availability.

The concept of a flu pandemic and what it could do for our country and our constituents and the world at large, it is what is keeping me up at night.

I really think it is so important the bipartisan work that we are doing on these flu issues.

How long would it take? Because right now, we don't have a stockpile of pandemic flu vaccine.

Many competitive telephone providers use the physical infrastructure of incumbent carriers to provide telecom services to businesses through an arrangement called 'special access.'

The uncertainty in those states is really contributing to instability in the whole insurance market in those states.

I really think that the comparison of the CO-OPs to a private business is a little unfair.

Do you think that you can do anything to give more certainty to this program without statutory changes? Yes or no?

But, again, if you have a CO-OP that's on the edge, that didn't solve that problem.

Now, the risk corridor program also ended up not coming through to the CO-OPs as we learned very painfully in Colorado in the last couple of weeks.

Given that, how is it that the CO-OPs wound up owing money to big insurance companies through the risk adjustment program?

I want to thank our witnesses for coming today, and I want to start with the risk-mitigation mechanisms in the law, which we commonly refer to as the three Rs, as I mentioned earlier.

What's the public interest in having that Federal backstop for these small boats?

The risk-corridor payments and full payment of it was promised repeatedly to the CO-OPs.

And if Congress had not made this program budget neutral, would it be fair to say that the payments from the risk-corridor program would have likely made a difference in keeping a lot of these CO-OPs solvent?

Congress rescinded the remaining lending authority for CO-OPs, which essentially blocked the establishment of further CO-OPs.

Congress cut the CO-OP loan funding program from $6 billion to $3.4 billion; is that right?

This should not be a partisan issue. We all need to figure out what's going on with these CO-OPs closing.

But you know something, equally to blame is us, Congress.

I am very disappointed that the Colorado Division of Insurance was compelled to shut down the CO-OP.