For Patients' Rights, It's a Quiet Fadeaway

[kskiska]

Hill Partisanship And HMO Changes Cooled a Crusade

As the opening question of the final 2000 presidential debate, barely three weeks before the election, a man in the St. Louis audience asked why the government did not hold HMOs accountable for their decisions. George W. Bush replied that, as president, he would work for a federal law to protect patients' rights. "It's time for our nation to come together and do what's right for the people," he said that October night.

Nearly three years later, the government provides no federal safeguards for Americans in managed-care plans. Yet the crusade for patients' rights has faded from view -- both at the White House and in Congress.

Apart from one sentence in his State of the Union address in January, Bush has not mentioned the topic all year. The father of the patients' rights movement in Congress, Rep. Charles Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.), resurrected legislation in March so half-heartedly that he decided not to seek any co-sponsors. In the Senate, the issue's main champions have not even gone through the motions of filing a bill.

It was two years ago that the drive to protect the nation's patients crested, when Bush and Norwood reached an agreement on the issue's most divisive aspect: how much recourse to give patients in the courts if their health plans deprive them of care. The House accepted the surprise deal, but more than a year of negotiations between the White House and the Senate quietly ended in an impasse.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62831-2003Sep11.html

[Nottingham]

1. Since there are millions of Americans in HMO's This issue Hurts

Bush tremendously thats why candidates mandating Universal Health are the candidates to watch! :bounce:

[twilight]

2. too late for that crap here

The HMO I WAS in packed up and left town 2 years ago - no questions asked. Now the bill has tripled, but who cares?

Answer: No one.

:kick: