mr. speaker , i thank my colleague for yielding me this time to speak on the substitute that has been offered .  now , if we think that having states regulate insurance in a small group market is a problem with state-mandated benefits , this is the mother of all complicated programs to offer health insurance , because what are we going to do ?  we are going to have the federal government do it .  now , none of us really believes that the federal government ought to be in the business of running big-risk pools and offering plans to small businesses .  secondly , the bill is estimated , and it has changed from last year ; last year there was a $ 50 billion authorization , but it is still going to cost an awful lot of money to do this bill .  one of the most damaging parts , though , is that each employer who would take part in this plan that is being offered would still be subjected to the state mandates on health insurance in their particular state .  there are 1 , 500 state-mandated health benefits around the country .  it also requires that the employer must pay at least 50 percent of the premium .  in most cases , i would imagine the employer would pay far more than that of the premium ; but maybe it is a small company , maybe it is five or six employees , and maybe together they decide , we want to qualify for this , but we will each pick up our own share of the cost .  why would we want to prohibit them from including themselves in this by this type of a requirement ?  it also says that every employer must offer this to every employee who has worked at the company for 3 months .  that seems like a very short period of time , especially in some industries where you have an awful lot of turnover where they would typically require that you wait 6 months before you would qualify .  all this would do would be to drive up the cost .  but one of the most amazing parts of this substitute , we would subsidize this from the federal government and , for employers with 25 or fewer employees , we would give them a subsidy to help entice them into this program .  and , if you qualified , you qualify for a 10-year period .  now , some small company with less than 25 employees may qualify , may get the subsidy and may , over a course of several years , become highly successful .  but under this particular substitute , they would still qualify for the subsidy .  i do not think any of us believe that the federal government ought to be operating a health insurance company .  there are a lot of mechanisms in the private market for this association health plan program to work .  and , again , why do we want to make the perfect the enemy of the good ?  the underlying bill that we have will , in fact , work .  it will allow millions of americans to get better-quality coverage at much more competitive prices than what they get today .  so let us allow the underlying bill to go forward .  let us defeat the substitute .  