[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 84 (Wednesday, June 24, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H5069]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             AMERICANS NEED A PATIENT'S BILL OF RIGHTS NOW

  (Mr. GREEN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. GREEN. Mr. Speaker, in today's Washington Post there is a front 
page article that illustrates the immediate need for our Patient's Bill 
of Rights.
  In February of 1997, doctors told a 52-year-old local resident, 
father of five, that a liver transplant was his only chance to beat 
liver cancer. The executives of the HMO disagreed and denied coverage 
for this lifesaving treatment.
  Over the next five months this local resident wrote three letters to 
his HMO, and each was ignored. Finally, five months after his doctors 
originally told him he needed a transplant, he won an external appeal. 
The HMO was ordered to pay for the transplant. Five days after he won 
that appeal, he was too sick to receive that transplant and he died.
  Mr. Speaker, how many people have died because of delay in medical 
care because of this law we have now? If we had a Patient's Bill of 
Rights that included timely internal and external appeals; access to 
specialists; point of service options; open communications between 
patients and providers; and, accountability for these medical 
decisions, these Americans would not be dying because they are being 
denied medical care.
  Mr. Speaker, we need a Patient's Bill of Rights now.

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