[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 14163-14164]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                    PUTTING PATIENTS BEFORE PROFITS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday evenings I usually do a 
radio show called ``Talking to the People'' with a co-host, Garfield 
Major; and on last evening, we were supposed to have a guest, a young 
lady who was going to be with us. But then, of course, during the week 
she passed away, and we decided that we would dedicate the show in her 
memory. Her funeral is going to take place on Thursday of this week, 
and I simply want to

[[Page 14164]]

say to the family of Evelyn Spivery and all of the people who worked 
with her that we share with them in their grief and sorrow at her early 
and untimely death.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise today to lend my support to and talk about an 
issue that is important to all of America, and that is the issue of a 
patients' bill of rights. Not just any patients' bill of rights, but I 
support the patients' bill of rights sponsored by my 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) here 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 matter of fact, 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 we should pass a patients' bill of rights, but 
which version we shall pass. In other words, we are all pretty much in 
agreement that patients need to be afforded an increased level of 
protection from the predatory tendencies of some components of our 
health care delivery system. But rather than immediately delving 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 you, we are all 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 at some level 
acknowledges the basic reality that the interests of some parts of our 
health care delivery system seem 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 what I will 
call the nature of the beast. Too often I believe that we talk about 
solutions without fully understanding the problem. I believe that with 
a careful examination of the means and motives by which some components 
of our health care system 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.

                              {time}  1930

  Now, what is it about those components of our health care system that 
is so inherently evil? Well, let me read a quote from Milton Friedman, 
a well-known advocate of free market economics. Mr. Friedman says that 
``few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations 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 the profit motive is extraneous and inappropriate. 
This narrow-minded approach has placed our great Nation in a completely 
unique situation. We are the only Nation in the entire world with a 
health care system whose fundamental organizing principle is to avoid 
as many sick people as possible.
  Let me say that again. I believe this gets to the crux of the matter. 
Many managed care corporations are predicated upon avoiding the needs 
of patients.
  Now, given the fact that some managed care corporations are opposed 
to the needs of patients, given the fact that some managed care 
guidelines, as they are currently written, do not allow patients to 
stay overnight for a mastectomy or see a neurologist for new onset 
seizures, and given the fact that some corporations spend 25 cents of 
every dollar on administrative expense while Medicare is administered 
at a rate of over 12 times less, and given the fact that many of these 
same corporations feel that patients' rights that would allow the 
patient to go into a court of law to seek redress for injury, I think 
it is clear, Mr. Speaker, that the only real Patients' Bill of Rights 
is the one that puts people over profits, and the motive is to protect 
the patient.

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