[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 6]
[House]
[Pages 7799-7800]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          MANAGED CARE REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. WOOLSEY. Mr. Speaker, 5 years ago the Republicans defeated 
President Clinton's health care reform bill. They claimed it would 
allow the Federal Government to interfere with the doctor-patient 
relationship. Yet when the same relationship was threatened by a 
corporate bureaucracy, Republicans last year offered legislation that 
did nothing to protect the sanctity of choices made by doctors and 
their patients.
  It is the same story in the 106th Congress. Democrats have been 
waiting 2 years to pass the Patients' Bill of Rights. Right now we are 
ready to work to improve Americans' access to quality health care. 
Right now, today, we are ready to make consumer protections real for 
all Americans. Although many States have passed legislation making 
patchwork protections State-by-State, this patchwork does not provide a 
good fix for over 160 million Americans, Americans who need health care 
reform.
  While there are many fine managed care organizations in my own 
district, and they are good, Sonoma and Marin Counties, California, on 
the leading edge of health care reform, too many horror stories are all 
too well known across this country. Doctors tell us real-life horror 
stories about how they are gagged by insurance companies that dictate 
what they can tell their patients about treatment options.

                                               
                                               

[[Page 7800]]

They tell us that a patient's treatment decisions are often overruled 
by a clerk and that patients are denied a specialist's care. Or they 
tell us that patients are shuttled out of a hospital before recovery is 
complete.
  Americans know better. They want better treatment. Americans are 
demanding that the Republican leadership take real action on health 
care reform. But instead, the Republican legislation does not ensure 
that patients have the right to even see a specialist. Nor does it 
prevent insurance companies from continuing to send women who receive 
mastectomies home early, against the advice of their physician. Lastly, 
under the Republicans' bill, if patients are denied care, they would 
not have the right to a meaningful external appeal. In other words, 
they will not be able to sue.
  In the final analysis, Mr. Speaker, the Republican bill will do 
little to prevent medical decisions from being made by insurance 
company clerks instead of by doctors and their patients.
  What our health care system needs is the Democratic Patients' Bill of 
Rights. This legislation will make sure that doctors and patients are 
free to make decisions about patient health. The Patients' Bill of 
Rights will ensure that patients have the right to openly discuss with 
doctors their treatment options, have the right to receive uniform 
information about their health plan, have the right to go to the 
emergency room when the need arises, have the right to see a 
specialist, and seek remedy from the courts when claims have been 
unfairly denied.
  It is time to put doctors and patients back in charge of our health 
care system. I urge the Speaker and my colleagues to support the 
Patients' Bill of Rights. I plead with the Republican leadership to 
bring HMO health care reform to the House floor for debate.

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