Frank Pallone: “Everything you said is absolutely true. I know in my State we estimate that every insurance policy, for those who have…”

“Everything you said is absolutely true. I know in my State we estimate that every insurance policy, for those who have insurance and are paying their premiums, there is built into it something like $1,000 to $1,500 per year in your premium that pays for uncompensated care for others. And I actually have a statistic in that Energy and Commerce study that I mentioned that says in my district alone repeal would increase the cost of uncompensated care by $54 million annually for hospitals in my district. But what I wanted to point out was you can actually eliminate a lot of the uncompensated care because what happens, people don't have health insurance and so they don't see a primary care doctor on a regular basis. And they get sicker, and their only recourse is to go to an emergency room. I tried to get the CBO to build into this the savings that would come about because of preventive care. In other words, the fact that all of these people who are uninsured go to the emergency room, don't see a doctor, and all of a sudden they see a doctor and they stay well because they take preventive care of themselves and they do wellness and then they don't end up getting sick and going to the hospital. But that was never built into the system. The CBO won't score prevention, so to speak. But I would maintain there is huge savings.…”