Frank Pallone: “The amazing thing that my colleague brings out about the preemption is usually, for most protections or legislation that…”

“The amazing thing that my colleague brings out about the preemption is usually, for most protections or legislation that is of a protective nature for health or safety on a Federal level, the Federal law reads that if the State wants to be more protective of the health or the safety or the environment, or whatever it happens to be, that they can do so. It is amazing that this bill does the opposite. This Republican bill says that if we are more protective of the patient's health, then we are going to preempt that and the Federal law is going to hold. Usually we do the opposite, as the gentleman knows. So, again, there is clearly an effort here to do what the insurance companies want rather than do what not only is right, the right thing for the average person, but also what the norm is here when we deal with health and safety and environmental and other protections of that nature. So we know there is sort of a cynical side to this Republican bill in terms of what they are trying do.”