[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 85 (Tuesday, June 19, 2001)]
[House]
[Pages H3250-H3251]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        PATIENTS' BILL OF RIGHTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Johnson of Illinois). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SESSIONS. Mr. Speaker, the House has concluded its activities for 
the day, and I thank the gentleman from Colorado for taking time to 
update us on the important issues that he finds not only in his 
tutelage as a Member of Congress from Colorado, but also as an 
important Member of this body.
  Mr. Speaker, tonight I would like to talk about something that is 
very important. It is called the Patients' Bill of Rights. It is an 
important issue that the House of Representatives and the other body 
will be taking up. The issue

[[Page H3251]]

of the Patients' Bill of Rights is one that is of importance not only 
to consumers, but it is also important to physicians. It is important 
to health care providers; it is important to insurance providers. It is 
important to Members of Congress because we recognize that today in 
health care across this country that there are some unresolved issues 
and some changes that have not taken place in the Nation. The Nation, 
unfortunately, is looking to Washington, D.C. to attempt to solve some 
of these problems.
  Tonight I would like to float a new concept or idea which I believe 
will become part of the health care debate. We are all aware that by 
and large Republicans and Democrats, Members of this body, have come to 
an agreement on many things that will be necessary to solve the health 
care problem. Things like access to emergency rooms and making sure 
that sick people are taken care of and having doctors make decisions 
and making general reform under the Patients' Bill of Rights, but the 
impediment or the stopping point, why we have not been able to resolve 
this matter rests on the issue of liability. The issue of liability or 
accountability is one that has not been fully seen through with an 
answer.
  Mr. Speaker, part of the problem goes back to something that is 
called ERISA, which is an act from 1974, an act that provides companies 
that have or do business across State lines the ability to give them a 
chance to have an insurance policy, a savings plan and other types of 
arrangements for their employees on a nationwide basis rather than 
looking directly at how they might comply with 50 State insurance 
commissioner plans or 50 State plans related to savings plans.
  Because of ERISA, what is called ERISA preemption, it means that 
health care providers do not have to comply exactly because of this 
exemption that they have in the marketplace to liability issues. It 
gives them an exemption from being sued essentially in the marketplace.
  So there are some HMOs that may or may not provide service that would 
be consistent with State plans, and so there is a call for us to level 
that playing field and decide how that is going to work.
  Mr. Speaker, the answer that is generally accepted is that you just 
allow HMOs to be sued so that the consumer or a doctor's decision is 
taken into account and corrected.
  We, as Members of this body, deliberated on this effort. Last year I 
voted for something called the Norwood-Dingell bill, which would allow 
this to take place, where a body, that is an HMO, could be sued for a 
decision that they would be making in health care. The inability that 
we have for this body to decide today how that lawsuit would take 
place, whether it would be caps or an unlimited amount of money, 
whether it would be suing in Federal court or State court, who would be 
making medical decisions, whether medical decisions would be a part of 
this or whether it would be for harm, are things that have been widely 
debated.
  The idea that I would like to discuss tonight is how we can go about 
resolving this. Essentially my plan that will be put forward is one 
that says that I believe that we should not skew the marketplace. We in 
fact want to have employers be protected when they do not make medical 
decisions. We do not want employers to be sued. We do not want lawsuits 
that would take money from health care and cause an incredible amount 
of draining off of resources out of health care to take place. So we 
want to protect employers. We want doctors to make decisions. We want 
doctors to make the decisions that they have been trained to do that 
are medically necessary.
  We want to make sure as a public policy perspective that we are able 
to move on and give every single patient those things that they need 
and not hold up the delivery of those changes so that customers can, 
consumers can have what they need.
  Mr. Speaker, my plan is simple. It separates process from harm. It 
says that we will not allow lawsuits as part of a difference that might 
take place between an HMO and a consumer, an HMO and a doctor. We will 
not allow those to go to a lawsuit where there is a nonharm that has 
been placed as a difference between these circumstances.
  Why is this important? It is important because I do not believe that 
we should solve our differences in a court of law, but rather we should 
be dynamic in understanding that a doctor should be the one who is 
making the decisions about nondamage differences in the marketplace. So 
my bill will separate what I call process from harm.
  The process would be, as has been accomplished in many States around 
the country, where there is a difference between a consumer, a patient, 
a doctor, and a health care provider, we would allow an internal and an 
external review, the internal review meaning that we would allow the 
HMO the opportunity to understand what their difference is and that 
they would have to respond back with a physician's answer, but that the 
final decision in this would be made by an external review, a panel 
that was made up of three expert physicians in this field. I believe it 
is important that we allow doctors to make medical decisions and not 
look to courts to do that.
  On the other side of the coin where we deal with harm, I believe it 
is important that we go to a court of law, that we allow a harmed party 
an opportunity not only to go to a court to address these issues, but 
to be in front of a jury. That is where the other part of my bill will 
allow a party, a harmed party, to go to State court to resolve their 
differences.
  It is my hope that this process that we are beginning will allow us 
an opportunity to move forward in a bipartisan way to address the 
issues and give patients those things that they need, address them 
under the Patients' Bill of Rights and also address them under 
liability.

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