Frank Pallone: “Well, I just wanted to say that my colleague from Texas has brought up a number of really important points here. Number…”

“Well, I just wanted to say that my colleague from Texas has brought up a number of really important points here. Number one, the whole issue of costs, we have been criticized, Democrats have been criticized, for their patient protection bill by the allegations by the insurance industry that it is going to cost a lot more money. The gentleman points out that in Texas, there has actually been no premium increase. We had a report from the Congressional Budget Office that just came out a couple of weeks ago on our Democrat bill that said that even if everything passed and our bill was law, at the most, individuals would pay only about two dollars more per month for the patient protections that are so important to the American people. The other thing the gentleman pointed out is that we have, in effect, now, these two regimes, if you will, for people who are in ERISA and they are working for an employer that has a self-insured plan, which now preempts, the Federal law preempts it, and those people are not coming under ERISA. One of the things that is important is some of the proposals put forward by the Republicans, particularly the Senate proposal, actually does not even provide the patient protections if you are not under ERISA.”