Word: hmos
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...Room of the West Wing on the morning of June 21, she listened with pursed lips as Nick Calio, the White House legislative director, insisted that President Bush should threaten to veto the patients' bill of rights--legislation aimed at protecting people from the bureaucratic whims of profit-driven HMOs. The bill is badly flawed, Calio argued, and the V word is the only way to force Congress to make it more to Bush's liking. Hughes jumped into the fray. "Once we say veto," she replied, "that's all anyone's going to hear." To Hughes, the counselor responsible...
...filed in state courts, and put in place ironclad guarantees that employers can't be sued over the health-care benefits they offer. "This bill is a disaster for employers and employees," claims Senate minority whip Don Nickles. The new regulations and costs it imposes on insurers and HMOs, he adds, "could cause millions of people to lose their insurance...
...administration either. Republican Rep. Ernie Fletcher, a doctor, had been talking up his patients bill with White House aides for several months, but getting little more than mild interest. Fletcher's measure was nearly identical to Frist's, except that Fletcher eventually added a provision allowing patients to sue HMOs in state courts in a limited number of cases. Fletcher attached the state court provision as sweetener to draw off Republicans from the Norwood bill. The White House, however, wasn't eager to open the window even slightly to state courts, so the talks with Fletcher meandered...
...Frist or Nickles plan, the White House and Lott settled on a hodgepodge of amendments grafted from both plans that Republicans threw at the Democratic bill to pick it apart. Lott also tried for a while to string out debate on the measure to give attack ads aired by HMOs and health insurance companies time to soften up the Dems. The TV attack ads and GOP rhetoric zeroed in on a provision in the Kennedy-McCain-Edwards bill that allowed employers to be sued if they were directly involved in medical decisions for their workers. Republicans figured that warning about...
...line and peeled off enough moderate Republicans to defeat hostile Republican amendments by comfortable margins. The only compromises Democrats were willing to make were on their provision making employers liable in some civil suits. On other issues, such as adding tax breaks to the bill or curbing the liability HMOs faced, the Democrats refused to budge and easily defeated Republican attempts to change the bill. The Kennedy-McCain-Edwards bill guarantees patients that their insurer will pay for emergency care, visits to specialists such as pediatricians, minimum hospital stays after mastectomies and costs associated with clinical trials. The bill gives...