Cook County officials say the county’s health system could take a major hit if the federal health care bill passed last week by the House becomes law. County Health System director Jay Shannon said Monday that the cost could be as high as $800 million. He said the system would retain its policy of treating patients without regard for their ability to pay. However, he said a loss that size would require changes of some kind, and that patients would likely suffer.

“It would be foolhardy to think that if you take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the system without some other backfill, that we’d be able to do exactly the same thing,” he said.