[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 8 (Tuesday, January 19, 1999)]
[Senate]
[Pages S365-S366]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. DASCHLE (for himself, Mr. Kennedy, Mrs. Boxer, Mr. Dodd, 
        Mr. Dorgan, Mr. Edwards, Mr. Cleland, Mr. Reid, Mr. Durbin, 
        Mrs. Murray, Mr. Akaka, Mr. Wyden, Mr. Harkin, Ms. Mikulski, 
        Mr. Leahy, Mr. Reed, Mr. Sarbanes, Mr. Wellstone, Mrs. 
        Feinstein, Mr. Byrd, Mr. Rockefeller, Mr. Kerry, Mr. 
        Torricelli, Mr. Bingaman, and Mr. Bryan):
  S. 6. A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act, the Employee 
Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, and the Internal Revenue Code 
of 1986 to protect consumers in managed care plans and other health 
coverage; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.


                      the patients' bill of rights

  Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, today, we renew the battle in Congress to 
enact a strong Patients' Bill of Rights to protect American families 
from abuses by HMOs and managed care health plans that too often put 
profits over patients' needs.
  Our Patients' Bill of Rights will protect families against the 
arbitrary and self-serving decisions that can rob average citizens of 
their savings and their peace of mind, and often their health and their 
very lives. Doctors and patients should be making medical decisions, 
not insurance company accountants. Too often, managed care is 
mismanaged care. For the millions of Americans who rely on health 
insurance to protect them and their loved ones when serious illness 
strikes, the Patients Bill of Rights is truly a matter of life and 
death.
  The dishonor roll of those victimized by insurance company abuses is 
long and growing.
  A baby loses his hands and feet because his parents believe they have 
to take him to a distant hospital emergency room covered by their HMO, 
rather than to the hospital closest to their home.
  A Senate aide suffers a devastating stroke, which might have been far 
milder if her HMO had not refused to send her to an emergency room. The 
HMO now even refuses to pay for her wheelchair.
  A woman is forced to undergo a mastectomy as an outpatient, instead 
of with a hospital stay as her doctor recommends. She is sent home in 
pain, with tubes still dangling from her body.
  A doctor is punished by being denied future referrals under a managed 
care health plan, because he told a patient about an expensive 
treatment that could save her life.
  The parents of a child suffering from a rare cancer are told that 
life-saving surgery should be performed by an unqualified doctor who 
happens to be on the plan's list, rather than by a specialist at the 
nearby cancer center equipped to perform the operation.
  A patient with a fatal cancer is denied participation in a clinical 
trial that could save her life.
  Our Patients' Bill of Rights addresses all of these problems. It 
takes insurance company accountants out of the practice of medicine and 
returns decision-making to patients and doctors, where it belongs.
  The bottom line is that our program guarantees people the rights that 
every

[[Page S366]]

honorable insurance company already grants--and provides an effective, 
timely means to enforce these rights. These protections are common-
sense components of good health care that every family believes they 
were promised when they purchased health insurance and paid their 
premiums.
  Virtually all of the patients' protections in this legislation are 
already available under Medicare. They have been recommended by the 
National Association of Insurance Commissioners and the President's 
Advisory Commission. They have even been proposed as voluntary 
standards by the managed care industry itself through its trade 
association.
  Our Patients' Bill of Rights is a responsible and effective answer to 
the widespread problems that patients and their families face every 
day. It is supported by a broad and diverse coalition of doctors, 
nurses, patients, and advocates for children, women, and working 
families, including the American Medical Association, the Consortium of 
Citizens with Disabilities, the American Cancer Society, the American 
Heart Association, the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, the 
National Partnership for Women and Families, the National Association 
of Children's Hospitals, and the AFL-CIO, to name just a few of the 
more than 180 groups endorsing our bill.
  It is rare for such a broad and diverse coalition to come together in 
support of legislation. But they have done so to end these flagrant 
abuses that hurt so many families.
  Every family in this country knows that it will some day have to 
confront the challenge of serious illness for a parent, or a 
grandparent, or a child. When that day comes, all of us want the best 
possible medical care for our loved ones. Members of the Senate deserve 
good medical care for their loved ones--and we generally get it. Every 
other family is equally deserving of high quality care--but too often 
they do not get it because their insurance plan is more interested in 
profits than patients.
  The Patients' Bill of Rights provides simple justice and basic 
protection for each of the 160 million Americans with private insurance 
who will benefit from this legislation. We will continue to fight for 
meaningful patient protections until they are signed into law. We will 
not give up this struggle until every family can be confident that a 
child or parent or grandparent who is ill will receive the best care 
that American medicine can provide.
                                 ______