Frank Pallone: “The amazing thing is when we were in our committee and we were marking up the bill, I remember asking questions about…”

“The amazing thing is when we were in our committee and we were marking up the bill, I remember asking questions about, well, what about the fact that you do not have a set premium? In other words, you can charge whatever you want for this, for the health insurance or for the prescription drug benefit. And what if the HMO's do not want to cover the sicker seniors or certain seniors. And the answer I got back from some of my Republican colleagues is, well, if this does not work, giving them this $12 billion windfall, they can come back in another 2 or 3 years and we will give them more money. It is incredible how they totally violate the idea of competition and, as the gentleman says, a level playing field, and are willing to give the HMOs or the private insurance companies more and more money if they are not willing to cover the seniors. Where does it end? There is no end to it.”