Rights and Health
Consumers should not have to give up basic legal due-process rights on something as crucial as health care. If a product--say, a faulty tire--harms someone, the law allows him or her to seek both repayment of costs and punitive damages from the product manufacturer. Fear of having to pay for such mistakes keeps industry honest, forcing it to improve faulty products and avoid cutting corners. However, if a health plan makes a decision that harms or kills somebody, it is generally exempt from substantial liability.
The proposed Patients Bill of Rights, which the Senate began debating this week, could repair the imbalance between patients and health care providers. It would close gaps in federal law that deprive more than 160 million privately insured Americans of due process.
Both sides in the debate have legitimate gripes. President Bush is concerned about provisions that could scare some businesses away from providing health coverage, since the ultimate cost would be theirs. The bill’s authors--Sens. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.)--fear an alternative bill that leans toward HMOs.
What’s needed is a dose of compromise.
Bush struck the right note Wednesday when he said “the idea is to serve more patients, not to create more lawsuits.” Unfortunately, he then embraced a bill by Sens. John Breaux (D-La.), Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and James Jeffords (I-Vt.) that does as many favors for managed care as Kennedy, McCain and Edwards do for trial lawyers.
To prevent the debate from degenerating into a Politicians’ Battle of Self-Righteousness, legislators should agree on a few basic rights: Patients should be able to appeal to an independent panel of medical experts--and ultimately to the courts--when treatment is denied. All insured people should be protected, not just those in federally regulated plans. The $500,000 cap on pain and suffering damages in the bill that Bush supports is too low to make what are often extraordinarily complex cases worth a good attorney’s time.
Common ground may be found in a new House GOP bill that would allow patients to file unlimited damage suits in state courts, but only in cases where HMOs have failed to abide by independent review panels. However, it’s not clear that the House bill would close loopholes in the Bush-backed Senate legislation that would waive minimum patient protections at a state’s request and let HMOs select and pay for the supposedly “independent” medical board.
Each side wants more than it can politically get. The real question is whether consumers will get anything. If Congress can put aside politics on any issue, it should be this.
