Pete Stark: “the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill is a modest improvement. The elephants mated and begat a mouse. It could have been a great…”

“the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill is a modest improvement. The elephants mated and begat a mouse. It could have been a great bill, but, in effect, it snatched mediocrity from the jaws of greatness. It would have been a much greater bill if it had avoided MSA's, if it had guaranteed group health insurance policies to firms of all sizes, not just to those with under 50 employees. It could have been a great bill if it had truly addressed medical privacy issues. There are some real dangers in the privacy being opened up by a national data computer system. And it holds terrible dangers for privacies of our citizens and their medical records being available to insurance companies across the country. It would have been a great bill if it had not been loaded up with secret last-minute multimillion-dollar breaks for one particular pharmaceutical company. And indeed it would have been a memorial bill if it had provided some modest health insurance protections which would cost relatively nothing. Senators Domenici and Wellstone were willing to offer a most inexpensive proposal to limit caps on mental health services to the same kind of caps that may exist on physical health. It is really a slap in the face to those families who must suffer mental health and pay for it out of their own pocket.”