Greg Ganske: “as Members on both sides of the aisle know, I have stood on this floor night after night talking about abuses in the HMO…”

“as Members on both sides of the aisle know, I have stood on this floor night after night talking about abuses in the HMO industry and insurance, and I do that not to bash the insurance industry but to try to protect patients. There is a provision in this bill that I think helps protect consumers. We are talking about creating an entity that combines insurance, banking and securities. I think there should be a provision in this bill that protects a person who has insurance information on their health from having that information transferred over to the banking side. I do not want information like this, or HIV positive status, being transferred to the banking component. So in this bill there is a provision that was passed by the Committee on Banking and Financial Services with a lot of Democrat votes. Most of the Democrats on the Committee on Banking and Financial Services voted for this language that says that unless a consumer authorizes, someone cannot take that health information from the insurance portion and transfer it to the banking portion, or outside of it. Nothing in this legislation precludes the Secretary of Health and Human Services from going ahead and issuing her regulations. I want it to be on the record that the intent of the author of this provision, me, specifically says this legislation does not preclude the Secretary from going ahead and issuing regulations.”