Frank Pallone: “If you remember, we had many of the Members of the Texas delegation, and these are not ideological liberals by any…”

“If you remember, we had many of the Members of the Texas delegation, and these are not ideological liberals by any means, Democrats, many of them of conservative ideology, who had the experience in Texas where Texas passed a Patient Protection Act, and it was very similar to what we want at the Federal level. The results are already in and show that the cost is practically nothing. I think it was like 34 cents a month or something like that. One of the reasons that the cost was so minimal, and this was brought out by one of our task force hearings where we had someone testify from some of the Texas organizations that were involved, was because it led to prevention. In other words, it was sort of like what Congresswoman Woolsey was saying: Once the HMOs have this sort of floor that they have to provide these basic protections, they are very careful to make sure that the level of health care that is provided is of good quality, and you have preventative measures taking place so that you do not get lawsuits, you do not get all these problems that result from the current system, because they know they are being watched, and it actually cuts the costs down considerably.”