Frank Pallone: “as health insurance reform goes to conference between the House and the Senate, I want to stress again tonight in the 5…”

“as health insurance reform goes to conference between the House and the Senate, I want to stress again tonight in the 5 minutes that I have that the Republican leadership needs to drop controversial provisions that I think are likely to scuttle this very important health insurance reform. Of course, the most important aspect of this, the most controversial provision, the one that I think really needs to be dropped, is what we call medical savings accounts; the tax breaks, if you will, for the wealthy and the healthy. Mr. Speaker, last week the Senate passed the Kennedy-Kassebaum health insurance reform bill unanimously, 100 to zero. But the Senate bill, unlike the House bill, does not include these divisive provisions that doom the chances of this very important health insurance reform from becoming law. The so-called medical savings accounts are essentially tax-free savings accounts from which participants could pay for everything but catastrophic health care costs. The problem with these accounts is that they would be a good deal, again, only for the healthiest and wealthiest people in our health care system, those who do not have high health care costs on a regular basis. But health insurance costs would then increase for the average American, because essentially when we talk about health insurance, it all involves a health insurance risk pool which has all kinds of people in it.”