[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13632-13633]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



              HELP NEEDED FOR PATIENTS, NOT TRIAL LAWYERS

  (Mr. HAYWORTH asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, we will have a decision in the days to 
come. Do we opt for a genuine Patients' Bill of Rights, or do we 
instead follow the siren song of the trial lawyer's right to bill. Make 
no mistake, when Americans are sick, they do not want to deal with 
Washington bureaucrats or with insurance company bureaucrats. They want 
help from medical professionals.
  Mr. Speaker, the choice is simple. Are we going to allow patients 
seeking relief to end up in court or to be treated in a clinic? By the 
way, do we want to destroy health insurance as we know it? That may be 
the very serious unintended consequence of people who mean well but 
seem to put their faith

[[Page 13633]]

in healing more in trial lawyers than they do in physicians.
  Mr. Speaker, it is incumbent upon this House to pass a bill that is a 
help to patients, rather than a boom to the trial lawyer's lobby. Let 
us opt for the plan of the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Fletcher) to 
truly help patients rather than trial lawyers.

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