Resolving Disputes Over Treatment
Your Sept. 16 article (“Pressure Mounts to Let Consumers Sue HMOs”) fails to consider one important fundamental: the ticking clock. Litigation is a terrible way to assure that consumers get the care they need because it is costly, cumbersome, combative and, most important, often too late. We need a system that assures that patients always receive the proper care now--not after a lengthy judicial process.
The California Assn. of Health Plans joined with others from across the political spectrum to sponsor a bill calling for a system of independent, external review designed to ensure that medically appropriate decisions always prevail. Unfortunately, this bill was killed by the trial lawyers who would love to turn every dispute into a legal battle where, regardless of the outcome, they win.
If we really have the patients’ best interests in mind, and if we are really serious about setting up a “safety net” to address their concerns, let’s encourage our legislators next time around to turn external review into law.
ROSS GOLDBERG
Woodland Hills
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As a physician who has practiced with the nation’s largest, and in the view of most experts, finest HMO--Kaiser Permanente--for some 30 years, I must take exception to your article about using the courts to litigate disputes between patients and their managed-care plans over denial of treatment.
The article ignored a more sensible, more expedient and potentially far less costly alternative that seems to be gaining adherents in Congress and among many of the country’s not-for-profit HMOs, including Kaiser Permanente: the establishment of independent panels of expert physician reviewers whose opinions about whether or not to cover controversial or experimental treatments would then be binding upon HMOs.
HAROLD N. BASS MD
Northridge
Environmentalism
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Rodger Schlickeisen excoriates Republicans for passing “anti-environmental” legislation (Column Left, Sept. 17). All I can say is, it’s about time. Schlickeisen is upset because the pendulum has swung, in the process restoring some much-needed balance. Decades of victories by Schlickeisen and his radical environmentalist friends have accustomed them to the notion that victory for their side is the norm.
In reality, the “environmental” movement was long ago corrupted, becoming nothing but a tool used to promote a hidden agenda. Socialists, observing that their program was being rejected by the entire world, realized they could never pass their agenda on its merits. But a little green candy-coating would help the poison slide down. Thus it came to pass that every “green” solution to every “environmental crisis” (real or artificial) involved bigger government, more regulations, higher costs and higher taxes, less freedom, less choice. No wonder environmentalism is the darling of the big-government left. Karl Marx would have loved it.
JAMES F. GLASS
Chatsworth
