Cliff Stearns: “H.R. 10 would modernize America's financial service industry. Now, the big debate seems to be on the privacy protection.…”

“H.R. 10 would modernize America's financial service industry. Now, the big debate seems to be on the privacy protection. I think this bill contains very important, very start-of-the-debate important, issues for protecting the customers of the insurance industry, the banking industry and the securities industries. One of the most important provisions of this bill is this privacy information. Now, during consideration of this measure in the House Committee on Commerce, many of us know the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) offered an amendment on health information confidentiality, a lot of debate on it. We had a lot of debate on it. We talked about it, but all of us felt that this was just the start. If we did nothing, if we could not even get this debate started and we defeat this bill today, then we are going to have no privacy. So I think we should not let this small debate that we are having on privacy stall the entire bill, because in the end we can amend and we can work through HCFA and other places to create more privacy and perhaps more to everyone's liking.”