On the recordMarch 3, 2010
The gentleman is exactly correct. If you go on further, everybody that is offering insurance in an area has to offer the same exact basic plan. It is a basic plan. And then if an insurance company provides that one basic plan, they may offer one enhanced plan. But again, the commissioner specifies exactly what that plan is. And if you offer an enhanced plan, you may also have one premium plan for such area. But the bottom line is there will be many areas in the country, once everybody loses their own health insurance within a couple of years, everybody goes under this plan, the commissioner tells everybody what has to be in their plan. Everybody. And you have no choice, you have to go with what they said. And so the other thing is that once an insurance company provides that, they have no flexibility. Now there is debate about whether or not there would be a public option or a publicly financed insurance company to compete. We know how that works. We saw it with flood insurance. When the Federal Government comes in and provides that alternative, that competition, you run the private insurance companies out of business because the Federal Government operates in the red, run the private businesses out, and then the Federal Government does as our Federal flood insurance program has, continue to run deeper and deeper into red ink.
