[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 6 (Wednesday, February 4, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H246]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               HMO REFORM

  (Mr. ROTHMAN asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. ROTHMAN. Mr. Speaker, today the special interests are swarming 
around this Capitol to defeat HMO reform, reform that will hold the 
HMOs accountable for their actions. The American people of both 
political parties want to make their health care decisions with 
themselves and their doctors and not with some accounting clerk, who is 
neither a doctor or a nurse or other health care professional, make 
that decision which often denies them the care that they paid for with 
their insurance premiums, where the accounting clerk often gets an 
incentive for denying that care.
  Both political parties have put forth a bill to reform HMOs, but the 
special interests are now swarming over this Capitol to deny the right 
of the American people to get what they paid for when they paid their 
insurance premiums, the right to see the specialists they need, the 
right to know that they can go to the emergency room and not be turned 
away, the right that their doctor can send them somewhere and know that 
the patient that they send will get the care they deserve.
  I will save the special interests some trouble coming to my office. 
The people of Bergen and Hudson Counties, New Jersey want HMO reform, 
and they will not let the special interests stop us from doing the 
right thing.




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