Senate Democrats Vow to Fight HMO Bill

Senate Democrats Vow to Fight HMO Bill

NewwsMax.com Wires
Friday, August 3, 2001

WASHINGTON - Outraged by House passage of a patients' bill of rights they say protects HMOs more than patients, Senate Democrats have outlined future tactics they may use to change or kill the bill before it becomes law.

Sens. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and John Edwards, D-N.C., who had joined Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain in getting the Senate to accept a bill in June, said they would attempt to improve the bill in a conference committee planned to reconcile the two bills. But barring this, they plan to use the committee to kill these versions of the bill and plan to amend other, unrelated House bills to include their version of the patients' bill of rights.

The original bill - introduced by Reps. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., John Dingell, D-Mich., and Greg Ganske, R-Iowa - appeared to have enough votes to easily pass the House, until Wednesday evening, when President Bush and Norwood reached an agreement on compromise language that bridges the differences between their positions.

Under the Norwood-Bush amendment, non-economic and punitive damages would be capped at $1.5 million each - far less than the $5 million suggested by the earlier bill, but triple Bush's original position of $500,000 - and although patients could sue HMOs in state court, the amendment would force the courts to follow the more stringent federal lawsuit guidelines.

These provisions were called unacceptable by all of the original sponsors except Norwood, and by the Democrats, who had provided the bulk of the support for the original bill. Besides concerns about the provisions in the amendment - which supporters said make the protections for patients unenforceable because they limit lawsuits - the Democrats expressed frustration that the deal cut with the president occurred at the last minute, leaving little time to examine the actual legislative language.

"The more we see of this, the less we like it," Edwards said of the House Republican language. "Six of the seven principle sponsors of this legislation in the House and Senate have not accepted [the House language]. It is slanted at every turn for the HMOs and against patients and doctors."

Kennedy said that the president and House Republican leaders might have succeeded in watering-down the protections in the bill originally introduced in the House to protect employers and insurers, but that the victory would come at a cost.

Besides Kennedy, Edwards and McCain in the Senate, Reps. Greg Ganske, R-Ia., Marion Berry, D-Ark., and John Dingell, D-Mich., have condemned their own bill after the House modified it with language preferred by President Bush. Only Rep. Charlie Norwood, R-Ga., of the original sponsors continued to support the measure.

"We can address these issues in a conference," Kennedy said. "Barring that, we have a Democratic leader in the Senate that can decide to kill the bill in that conference and we could move amendments to House bills. This issue is not going away. They might have had a victory this (evening), but it will be a temporary one."

Because Senators can generally add any amendment to almost any kind of bill - as opposed to the House's strict rules governing what kinds of amendments can be added to bills - Kennedy's threat is a serious one. With the backing of Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., supporters of the Senate version of a patients' bill of rights could force the House Republicans to defeat the bill at every turn or force President Bush to veto bills he would actually like to sign, except for the HMO-related amendments.