Frank Pallone: “I have not stressed it so much because I know that the Republican plan does not have any kind of guaranteed benefit. In…”

“I have not stressed it so much because I know that the Republican plan does not have any kind of guaranteed benefit. In the other words, what the gentlewoman is basically referencing is when the Republicans put out their proposal, they suggest that I think for the first $1,000 they will pay 70 percent of the costs for the next thousand. Up to $2,000, they will pay 50 percent of the costs, and then from $2,000 to $4,500, they will pay none of the costs, but the reason I think that that proposal is absurd, as my colleague pointed out, is, and why they do not have any hesitancy of talking about it that way is because it really is not any benefit. In other words, what they have done essentially, from the way I understand it, they have said we are going to throw a certain amount of money out for these drug-only insurance policies, and in order to fit that in for what we would like to see for a benefit, we will structure it this way, and they have structured it with that hole because there is not enough money to pay for a real benefit that would be meaningful. The problem is that since this is just being thrown out to the private insurance sector, we do not even know what these drug-only policies will provide, and they are probably not even going to be available in large parts of the country.”