Frank Pallone: “the gentlewoman probably remembers within the last week or two that the President announced that he was significantly…”

“the gentlewoman probably remembers within the last week or two that the President announced that he was significantly increasing the reimbursement for HMOs. The reason that was given was because so many of the HMOs dropped out of Medicare, did not want to cover seniors within the Medicare program, that they needed to provide significantly more resources to the HMOs if they wanted to get them back into the Medicare program. It is obvious that under this bill that the HMOs are going to get significantly more money in terms of reimbursement rate than traditional Medicare. Again, that is just a function of the fact that the HMO industry was basically calling the shots at the White House, and here we go again with an example of someone within the industry now working at the White House on the very program that is increasing the amount of money that the HMOs will get.”