Karen Thurman: “after what Maine has done, which is kind of the leader in the country right now and I think through the leadership that…”

“after what Maine has done, which is kind of the leader in the country right now and I think through the leadership that the gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) has provided here in the House, they came back in their legislature with a very strong bill based on many of the studies that we have done in our districts about the cost of what has happened in Canada and what has happened in Mexico. But when we talk about these plans with the insurance companies, I will say to my colleague, and I think that many of us know this, is that in the Committee on Ways and Means, we actually had the chairman of the insurance industry and I asked him the question, I said, Mr. Kahn, I said, do you believe that insurance companies will offer a stand-alone drug benefit? And do my colleagues know what his answer was? No, absolutely not. They have no interest in going into any of our districts to cover any of the folks, whether they have been on HMOs or whether they are in a Medicare program stand-alone, a fee-for-service. They have no interest in this. The risk is too high for them to take. And we know that insurance companies work off of risk. And because the sickest would be the ones going into these programs, they cannot afford to offer a plan. So what my colleague is saying here is exactly right.”