Word: norwoods
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...privately fuming over White House stumbles in organizing its response to the patients bill of rights. Bush had wanted to delay considering a patient's bill to pursue other priorities like his energy plan. He could stall when Republicans controlled the Senate. White House aides got Republican Congressman Charles Norwood to hold off sponsoring in the House a measure similar to the one Sens. Ted Kennedy, John McCain and John Edwards introduced in the Senate. In exchange, Bush aides promised to negotiate a compromise with Norwood. But while they kept Norwood closeted in endless meetings, they secretly hatched a compromise...
...Bush's game plan went out the window when Jeffords' defection from the GOP gave Democrats control of the Senate. Daschle ordered that the patients bill would be the next measure considered after education, not energy legislation. Norwood announced he was introducing his legislation in the House...
...Norwood hadn't been the only congressman the White House was ignoring. House Republicans hoping to get a jump on the Democrats in their chamber with a patients rights bill weren't getting much attention from the 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...
...they get him out of this fix? Fletcher got some Republicans to bolt from the Norwood bill to sign on to his. But even with Hastert and the GOP leadership behind him, he doesn't yet have a majority. Many moderate Republicans are holding off and only a few Democrats have defected to his measure. "A lot of Democratic members would like to vote for this bill but they're getting unprecedented pressure from their leadership to vote against it," Fletcher tells TIME. Fletcher isn't helped by the fact that the Senate finally passed the Kennedy-McCain-Edwards bill...
Getting a patient's bill of rights he prefers just became tougher for President Bush because he strung along his friend, G.O.P. Congressman Charlie Norwood. When Democrat John Edwards introduced such a bill in the Senate last February, the White House opposed it largely because it let patients sue their HMOs for up to $5 million. The Administration got Norwood to hold off sponsoring a nearly identical bill in the House, promising to strike a compromise. Imagine his surprise when he found that Bush aides had secretly written a bill more to their liking with G.O.P. Senator Bill Frist, limiting...