Frank Pallone: “the reason why the Republicans have carved out this donut hole, which is going to make all these seniors, as my…”

“the reason why the Republicans have carved out this donut hole, which is going to make all these seniors, as my colleague says, pay a premium and get nothing in return is because they save a tremendous amount of money. Here they are worried about saving some money at the expense of the seniors at the Federal Government level, but yet they are going to throw all this money to the HMOs and to private companies to plus up the money that they get, and they do not have to have any kind of cost containment which would bring the costs down to the Federal Government. After all, if we had cost containment, the Federal Government would not have to shell out all this extra money, and we could fill that donut hole. I mean, it is just a way of saving money to the Federal Government, but at the same time, at the expense of the senior citizens.”