[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13983]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



      DEMOCRATS TAKE THE NEXT STEP TOWARD REAL PATIENT PROTECTIONS

  (Mr. MENENDEZ asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. MENENDEZ. Mr. Speaker, today Democrats take the next step in the 
long, arduous road to real patient protections, despite the fact that 
Republicans continue to construct roadblocks to meaningful managed care 
reform.
  Republicans will claim that they are moving managed care reform 
through the committee process, but what they will not tell us is that 
these so-called reforms lack meaning and enforcement.
  The American people deserve more than empty promises and rhetoric. 
They deserve to choose their doctor. They deserve access to 
specialists. They deserve to have doctors, not health care bureaucrats, 
making their vital medical decisions. Most importantly, they deserve 
legal remedies to hold their health plans accountable.
  The Democratic Patients' Bill of Rights provides these guarantees. 
Republicans are up to the same old tricks again this year. They will 
not even allow us to bring the Democratic Patients' Bill of Rights to a 
debate here on the floor for the American people to listen and 
ultimately for all of us to vote on.
  Last year, protecting their special interests, they narrowly defeated 
the real patient protections Democrats pushed to the floor. Then 
realizing that we represented the views of Americans across this 
country, they put forth a watered down proposal to try to detract from 
the real issues.
  Again this year Republicans are doing the same thing. This discharge 
petition should serve as a wake-up call to Republicans that Americans 
want real patient protections and they want it now.

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