Steven Holt: “I am pleased to join today in the fight for passage of the Patients' Bill of Rights. Few things are more fundamental…”

“I am pleased to join today in the fight for passage of the Patients' Bill of Rights. Few things are more fundamental, Mr. Speaker, more fundamental or more personal, than the relationship between a patient and her or his doctor. My wife is a physician, and the bond between her and her patients is something important, even sacred. It is a bond cemented by honesty and time and, importantly, by trust. The doctor-patient relationship is the bedrock of the entire health care system, and it is one of the main reasons that people choose to go into medicine in the first place. That relationship between doctors and their patients is under threat, and all too often in our Nation today, Mr. Speaker, the bond is being jeopardized by HMOs who are more interested in their profit statement than their mission statement. ...the focus on profits taken by some HMOs makes you think they have more in common with Neiman Marcus than Marcus Welby.”