Greg Ganske: “remember when we debated the Bipartisan Consensus Managed Care Reform Act here on the floor about 3 months ago, and the…”

“remember when we debated the Bipartisan Consensus Managed Care Reform Act here on the floor about 3 months ago, and the HMO industry said the sky will fall, the sky will fall; premiums will go out of site. We get the accurate answer, the accurate answer from the Congressional Budget Office, which has analyzed the bill which passed this floor by a vote of 275 to 151. What did the CBO say would be the cost? The CBO said that over 5 years, the cost of premiums would go up 4.1 percent total. Now, this is important to understand. All my colleagues should listen. The HMO industry will say 4.1 percent each year. Wrong. That is not what the CBO report says. In fact, I talked to a CBO staffer, Tom Bradley, last night and he said that in the first year there would be almost no effect. In the second, third, fourth and fifth years, premiums would go up about 1 percent over what they normally would be because of this legislation. To my friends who debated this liability issue so vigorously, who said liability will cost so much, well look at what the CBO said. The CBO said when it looked at the bipartisan consensus bill that the largest single coster was not liability. The largest single coster in our bill is the internal and external appeals process, at 1.3 percent.”