Greg Ganske: “Well, let us look at a little more detail at this. This is going to be a matter of contentious debate, if and when we…”

“Well, let us look at a little more detail at this. This is going to be a matter of contentious debate, if and when we can ever get the Republican leadership to allow this to come to the floor, and that is, what will be the cost of the liability on this? Well, here is what we have. We have a study that was done by Multinational Business Services, MBS. They estimated the liability cost impact of insurance premiums would be 0.75 percent. Less than 1 percent. What did Muse & Associates find would be the cost of liability for HMOs? 0.14 percent to 0.2 percent, two-tenths of a percent. How about the Barents Group? What did they estimate? 0.9 percent, less than 1 percent, up to about 1.5 percent. But, really, as was pointed out, the insurance premium increases are most likely to occur for the HMOs that are most likely to be denying the care that is medically necessary, not the HMOs that are trying to do the ethical job that they should be and providing the care when it is medically appropriate. So there would be a range. For many plans that are trying to do the ethical thing, the costs would be minimal.”