[Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents Volume 34, Number 26 (Monday, June 29, 1998)]
[Page 1197]
[Online from the Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

<R04>
Statement on Medicare and the Patients' Bill of Rights

June 23, 1998

    I am pleased to add my voice in support of today's efforts by 
Representatives Ganske and Dingell to file a discharge petition enabling 
an up or down vote in the House of Representatives for a Patients' Bill 
of Rights. Since November of last year, I have been calling on Congress 
to pass such legislation.
    It is now 7 months later and Congress has been unable to pass 
legislation, let alone hold even one Committee mark-up on a bill. With 
so many Americans' health at stake, I welcome the action taken today by 
Representatives Ganske and Dingell, and I believe it will help ensure an 
open debate on this issue that will allow for all parties, including 
Representative Norwood, to bring patients' rights legislation to the 
floor for vote.
    Passing patients' rights legislation would build on the actions I 
have already taken to extend patient protections to Americans in Federal 
health plans. This Friday, we will publish a Health Care Financing 
Administration (HCFA) regulation to implement new rules for all Medicare 
managed-care plans. The HCFA regulation will implement the new Medicare 
plan choices I signed into law last year as a part of the bipartisan 
balanced budget agreement. It will also include many of the patient 
protections I directed Medicare to implement last February, when I 
signed an Executive memorandum ordering all Federal health plans--which 
serve 85 million Americans--to come into compliance with the Patients' 
Bill of Rights. These regulations ensure that Medicare beneficiaries in 
managed-care plans have a range of important patient protections, 
including access to the specialists they need, access to ob-gyns, access 
to emergency room services, and an independent appeals process to 
address grievances with their health plans.
    Now we need the Congress to pass a Patients' Bill of Rights that 
guarantees all Americans these important patient protections. It is my 
hope and expectation that the bipartisan action being taken today in 
Congress will spur the House and the Senate to pass a strong, 
enforceable, and long-overdue bill.