Word: hmos
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...Senator Edwards:When you stack up the two bills side by side, the McCain-Edwards-Kennedy bill favors patients and doctors and the Frist-Breaux bill is tilted toward the HMOs. The most important thing is that our bill gives patients and doctors the right to get a second opinion if an HMO or insurance company denies coverage for care that a doctor orders...
...taxes last month and education last week were easy compared to passing a bill that gives patients more clout with their health maintenance organizations. The stakes are high for both sides, which have important constituencies to satisfy. Republicans don't want to upset big business and HMOs by raising healthcare prices while Democrats want their friends, the trial lawyers, to have the right tools to sue over bad care. With the Senate now under Democratic control, this is the first test for Majority Leader Tom Daschle to press an issue that's been a winning one for his party...
...reach a compromise education bill. But when Sen. John Edwards introduced his patients' rights measure last February with Kennedy and Sen. John McCain, Bush couldn't seem to return the phone calls. He wanted no part of their bill's provisions that allow aggrieved patients to tie up HMOs in state courts and win up to $5 million in jury awards. Bush also wasn't eager to strike any deal that would burnish McCain, his bitter rival in the Republican presidential primaries...
...nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the Kennedy-McCain bill would raise premiums by about $100 per year. The Frist version would raise them about $60. This appears to be a largely symbolic difference, but lobbyists for HMOs insist that $40 would exclude many Americans from coverage. What are the HMOs really afraid...
...they have to put in place to avoid massive judgments. So all the measures they?ve put in place to streamline medical processes will have to be peeled back and restructured completely. Restructuring, of course, means more regulations and more red tape, which increases the cost of business for HMOs. They?re also worried businesses will drop coverage because they won?t be able to afford the premiums they?ll be forced to raise to keep...