Greg Walden: “This amendment is pretty straightforward in asking the GAO to do this evaluation, and I think it is important to have…”

“This amendment is pretty straightforward in asking the GAO to do this evaluation, and I think it is important to have cost-benefit analyses of State-administered health insurance plans for States that may want to offer a public option. Again, here we have a situation where States are experimenting, and our States are great laboratories for reform. The gentleman comes from a State where Republican Governors helped lead that effort, Governor Romney and others, and now Senator Romney from a different State. But my State did a lot of reform work as well, and we are all trying to figure out: How do we get healthcare to people in a timely way that is affordable? And we share that goal. Unfortunately, some of the promise of ObamaCare turned out not to be the case. People's insurance premiums did not go down $2,500. I still hear in my town meetings and in correspondence with my constituents that some were well-served, but I have a lot of them who were left behind, and they are out in the cold. At one of my townhalls, I had a middle age couple come up and say: We have decided we can't afford health insurance, so we have decided to go without. They looked at the premiums. They looked at the deductibles that are in these markets, and said: We can't pencil it out. None of us want that to be the case. That is why I think some of these options are really important to look at. And States can do that.…”