Dianne Feinstein: “I think what we are seeing overwhelmingly all across the United States is a state of medical care and health insurance…”

“I think what we are seeing overwhelmingly all across the United States is a state of medical care and health insurance in this country that is becoming much more oriented toward business and much less oriented toward medicine. And this is prompting, I think, all across this land a terrible situation for physicians and for patients. What prompted me to introduce this bill was two California women who wrote to me. One was from a woman in Newark, CA. And she wrote--and this was almost 2 rac{1}{2} years ago--that she had a modified radical mastectomy as an outpatient at the Fremont Kaiser outpatient clinic. She was operated on at 11:30 in the morning and was released at 4:30 that afternoon, with no attempt made to see if she could even walk to the bathroom. She was 60 years old. And the discovery of cancer and the subsequent surgery were extremely draining both emotionally and psychologically. That is one case. Same day. Let me read you about another case.”