Word: hmo
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Anyone who watched Senate Democrats wax hysterical over managed care's evils while Republicans passed their milder version of HMO reform last week can be forgiven for not knowing two essential facts. First, 97% of treatment decisions by doctors are okayed by managed-care plans, one study shows. So those grisly stories repeated from the Senate floor--the woman who didn't get the catheterization and died--are true exceptions. Next, about 40 states already give patients some of the protections Democrats sought in their broader "bill of rights." The disingenuousness was bipartisan, of course. The Republicans, who had gleefully...
...final lines are being drawn in America's great HMO debate ? and it looks as if the issue will mostly be settled at the ballot box. The Senate on Thursday slogged through a second day of grueling partisan combat, eventually passing a more limited Republican version of a Patients' Bill of Rights. Amendment by amendment, the GOP majority struck down every Democratic attempt to give broader access to specialists and emergency-room care to the broadest possible number of insured patients, some 161 million persons. In nearly every case, Republicans came back to pass similar, but more limited, measures that...
...anyone anywhere in the world can attest to ? except quite possibly in Washington, where the current HMO debate is raging ? the best medical treatment isn?t worth anything if you can?t afford it. So it came as momentous news on Wednesday when a joint American-Ugandan research team announced a new, simple and inexpensive way to help prevent the transmission of the AIDS virus from pregnant mother to child. The new treatment uses the drug nevirapine, whose costs amounts to about $4, instead of the standard, short-course AZT regimen used in the Third World, whose costs total...
...Republicans have been holding together well," reports TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. "They believe they have managed a series of votes that will give them cover as having addressed HMO complaints." Democrats, while somewhat disappointed that the HMO debate has not created more of a national stir, have passionately denounced the Republican moves as an attempt to pass an industry-protection act instead of a patient-protection act. The White House continues to send signals that it will veto the Republican bill if it emerges from Congress unchanged. "Clinton solidly believes that the defeated Democratic positions are controversial only inside...
...election," says TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. Encouraged by the rhetorical and political momentum they gained over gun control, Democrats are trying to force the Republicans to go through some "tough political votes" over health care, says Dickerson. Republicans would prefer not to have to deal with the HMO issue, he reports, but, aware of the political draw of the matter, they are seeking to enact a limited bill that will both pass public muster and maintain the GOP?s reputation as the party of fiscal responsibility. At the moment there does not appear to be much wavering...