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The Patients’ Bill of Rights
With every new election and with every new congress, the need to campaign on health care issues is a must for any serious politician. ...
The most proposed legislation, when it comes to health care reform over the last few years has been the Patients’ Bill of Rights. This bill reflects the frustration the public feels towards the heath insurance industry. This bill is not designed to deal with the 43 million people in this country that do not have health insurance, but it may ease the feeling that most Americans have about their lack of control concerning medical choices that are dictated by the health insurance companies. The Patients’ Bill of Rights addresses a complex issue that has at its center Americans who pay the premiums for health insurance, pitted against insurance companies and their lobbyists who are in business to make a profit.
The need for health care reform has been present for many years in her article “Patients’ Bill of Rights,” Joann Bullard claims, ”Most Americans want to see progress in health care reform, but the present system and all it encompasses is overwhelming. ... David Eddy, senior advisor for health policy and management at Kaiser Permanente:
Blame falls on all participants in the health care system—patients, employers, health plans and even healthy people. ...
The Patients’ Bill of Rights is important legislation that is currently being debated in the Congress. The goal is to give Americans the kind of judicial rights they need to be better able to deal with the health care plans and at the same time, to protect the plans against the kinds of lawsuits that might be improper. In the end, the system of health care citizens need in this country is going to require a compromised bill that keeps the health care plans in business and attempts to keep the cost of those plans in a range Americans can afford. ... The current political health care issue is the “Patients’ Bill of Rights,” as the Democrats call it, or “The Patients’ Protection Act,” as the Republicans call it. Crafting a bill that will satisfy the Senate, the House of Representatives, and President Bush was the political challenge for 2001.
Voters of America want some kind of legislation, but politicians are unable to act, was the topic of the article, “Will Voter Impatience Force the Patients Rights Issue.” In it the author states, “Congress didn’t pass a bill to regulate managed care practices in 1999, but the failure gave cold comfort to the opponents who claim the measure would raise health care cost and even prompt employers to drop coverage. ... At that time, it was thought that because of the opposition from the health care industry, the bill would go away if the Congress could not agree; however, the issue stayed, and in that same year, both the House and the Senate passed bills on patients’ rights, although the two bills could not have been more different (2000, p. ... The differences in the bills were many; however, the main concern was over the patients’ right to sue for damages over care denials resulting in injury or death. ... Not all the Congress voted along party lines:
In the Senate, the split over the right to sue was largely partisan, with the Republicans siding with business, and insurance and Democrats with patients and providers. ... Driven largely by a cadre of health professionals, a considerable faction of Republicans defied their own leaders to support a bipartisan bill negotiated by Rep. ...
In the year 2001, the issue of Patients’ Rights went from a partisan effort to an effort that had congressmen like John McCain pushing for bipartisanship:
It is time for Congress to pass a meaningful Patients’ Bill of Rights. ... For too long, some of us in Congress have struggled to come up with a way to create rights for patients who have disputes with health –care maintenance organization.
Approximate Word count = 3277
Approximate Pages = 13.1
(250 words per page double spaced)
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