James M. Talent: “If you are an employee of, let us say the Boeing Company, and Boeing has a very important division in my district with a…”

“If you are an employee of, let us say the Boeing Company, and Boeing has a very important division in my district with a former McDonnell Douglas company, with tens and tens of thousands of people working for them, it is a great company, so that company is big enough and has this huge group of people and the group is an efficient group and they can put out money and sell funds, so in effect they do not have an insurance company except maybe to administer different aspects of the plan. As a result, they can stay in control, they can provide the kind of coverage that their employees want, and they have these kinds of economies of scale. Is not the whole issue why should not small employers be able to band together as groups to offer the same thing to their employees? They want to do it, their employees want it. There are tens of millions of people who do not have private health insurance. Why should they not be able to do that? Can you think of a reason?”