Patrick Kennedy: “you do not really need a lot of empirical information to understand that insurance companies only make money off of…”

“you do not really need a lot of empirical information to understand that insurance companies only make money off of healthy people, and that if they had a choice in this world of profit making, sick people cost them money. It is a given. It is common sense. So what we were able to do in this Kennedy-Kassebaum bill is get two things that kept insurance companies from blocking health insurance to all kinds of people, even people who needed health insurance: Preexisting condition and portability. There is agreement on it, and it is wonderful that even Republicans on the other side of the aisle agreed with this concept, that we needed to rein in the insurance companies on this issue. We have agreed to come this far. Why do we need to jeopardize something that has already been agreed on because we want to put in this medical savings account? We have agreed on all this. Now what do they want? The Republicans in the House want to add this medical savings account. Guess who supports this? Insurance companies. Guess why? Because, again, it allows them to only insure healthy people and block out health insurance for sick people that is going to cost them money. Just think about who is behind this, and I think you will be able to understand why you do not need any empirical evidence to know why medical savings accounts are going to be the killer of health care reform.”