Dueling HMO Initiatives Could Give Voters Headache

You see them at the grocery store and again at the swap meet: petitioners gathering signatures for a statewide initiative on the November ballot to curb unpopular activities of the managed care industry.

Trouble is, various sponsors, including consumer and labor groups, couldn’t agree on language for one initiative. So there are two out there.

Both contain similar protections for consumers. They’d outlaw “gag order” provisions in contracts between HMOs and doctors and other caregivers that prohibit the providers from telling patients about options not offered by their HMOs. Financial incentives for denying treatment would also be illegal.

But they differ too. For example, one initiative, called the Patient Protection Act of 1996, would levy fees on HMOs, insurers, hospitals and high executive salaries and set up a consumer board that would oversee HMO activities. The other, the similarly named Health Care Patient Protection Act of 1996, wouldn’t charge fees.

Proponents of both initiatives fear that they’ll hurt each other’s cause.

“I’m pretty unhappy about it,” says Dana Hohn, a regional director of Neighbor to Neighbor, a national consumer advocacy group favoring the Health Care Patient Protection Act. Hohn, who has organized petitioners in Orange, Los Angeles and San Diego counties, worries that consumers are confused enough by petitions for numerous initiatives on other issues without being confused even more by the two similar HMO-related ones.

Lorie Fisher, a nurse who lives in Laguna Hills and is garnering signatures for the other initiative, says that she encounters both people who want to do something about the abuses of managed care and those who are “very, very disgusted with being constantly asked to sign petitions.”

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Barbara Marsh covers health care for The Times. She can be reached at (714) 966-7762 and at barbara.marsh@latimes.com.