Karen Thurman: “And that is a concern because there needs to be a debate. We need to understand the cost. We need to understand the…”

“And that is a concern because there needs to be a debate. We need to understand the cost. We need to understand the consequence of whatever we bring to the floor. We need to understand if there is a market product out there for us. I mean, one of the problems that we have heard over and over again is if you turn this over to private insurance that there may not even be a tier. It may be, oh, well, here we go. We have got a prescription drug plan, but it is probably not going to start until a little bit later. And by the time people figure it out, the fact of the matter is there may not be an insurance company that is willing to provide that service without having other areas. They talk about the Federal health plan. Well, the difference is that is a whole package. We get young, we get middle, and we get older. We get new Federal employees. We get retired Federal employees. And the idea is that you spread it. You have a spread over this and that is not what is going to happen in a Medicare or what may be considered in a private insurance. You are going to have one group of folks who are, by the way, in most cases, the seniors with the least ability to pay, which is a fine goal, but they are also sometimes the sickest because they have not had the advantages, as the doctor was pointing out, of being able to have taken care of health care. So their medicines, probably because they have more complicated cases, are going to be more expensive.”