[Congressional Record Volume 147, Number 91 (Wednesday, June 27, 2001)]
[House]
[Page H3689]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        THE NATURE OF THE BEAST

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Kennedy of Minnesota). Under a previous 
order of the House, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is 
recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to add my voice to 
those who have been talking about support for a patient's bill of 
rights. But, of course, Mr. Speaker, not just any patients' bill of 
rights. I support the robust patients' bill of rights sponsored by my 
esteemed colleagues, Mr. McCain, Mr. Kennedy, and Mr. Edwards in the 
Senate, and the companion legislation, sponsored by the gentleman from 
Iowa (Mr. Ganske) and the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) in the 
House. I support the patients' bill of rights that puts patients before 
profits and values human life over the bottom line.
  The idea of a patients' bill of rights is nothing new to this 
Congress. We have all listened to the rhetoric and we have all been 
involved in the debate. As a Member of Congress since 1996, I must say 
that it is interesting to see where this debate has gone. I find it 
worth commenting that the question we are now faced with is not so much 
whether or not we should pass a patients' bill of rights but which 
version we should pass. In other words, we are all in agreement that 
patients need to be afforded an increased level of protection from the 
predatory tendencies of managed care organizations.
  Rather than immediately delve into the particulars of why we should 
prefer one version over another, I believe it is instructive to take a 
step back for a moment and look at the concept of a patients' bill of 
rights in the first place. The very idea that we need a patients' bill 
of rights, an idea I remind my colleagues that we all are in support 
of, implies the presence of an injurious element within our health care 
system. The simple fact that we are debating this idea means that each 
one of us, on some level, acknowledges the basic reality that the 
interests of managed care organizations tend to be adversarial to the 
interests of patients.
  I believe that the debate over which patients' bill of rights to 
accept can be resolved simply by looking more closely at the nature of 
the beast. Too often I believe we talk about solutions without fully 
understanding the problem. I believe that with a careful examination of 
the means and motives by which managed care corporations make money, 
off the pain and suffering of patients, the answer to the question of 
which patients' bill of rights is the real patients' bill of rights 
becomes self-evident.
  Now, what is it about managed care that is so inherently evil? Well, 
let me just quote one thing that Milton Friedman, a well-known advocate 
of free market economics, said. ``Few trends could so thoroughly 
undermine the very foundation of our free society as the acceptance by 
corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as 
much money for their stockholders as possible.'' In other words, if we 
go by the dictates that managed care organizations live by, not only is 
it undesirable to take a patient's well-being into account, it is 
simply unethical to do so. Any motive other than profit is extraneous 
and inappropriate.
  Now, obviously, this narrow-minded approach has put us in the 
situation that we are currently in. And I would suggest, Mr. Speaker, 
that we simply take stock of where we are as a country with a health 
care delivery system, put patients before profits, make sure that 
patients and their physicians have the opportunity to collaborate, to 
make decisions and determinations about the kind of treatment they 
should receive, and not some bureaucrat or clerk sitting in an office. 
That is the only real way to do it.
  So I would urge all of my colleagues and all of America to really 
support the Ganske-Dingell bill so that patients can have real rights, 
and that is the right to be involved, the right to live, the right to 
get good medicine when they are in need of it.

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