Karen Thurman: “We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I actually went back and looked at the vote. The vote was overwhelming. Not…”

“We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. I actually went back and looked at the vote. The vote was overwhelming. Not only on top of the vote being overwhelmingly bipartisan, also instructions to the conferees, because remembering that the House passed it, the Senate passed it, it was in conference, but it was never allowed to get out. The President at that time, Mr. Clinton, was ready to sign the bill. They could never come to agreement. It was all over this issue of responsibility, which I find extremely interesting because any other mention of any other issue, they keep telling that we need to take personal responsibility. Why would you not expect an HMO to take personal responsibility for decisions they make any different than you would ask an individual to take personal responsibility? So here it is, 2001, potentially we will have this opportunity. I would hope that our colleagues who supported the Dingell-Ganske-Norwood bill would be in favor of also getting this done in a prompt time and let us get it to the President and then he can make the decision as to what he wants to do. I am not trying to do that, I am just trying to make sure that in fact the people that we represent are given the options that they have been asking for since 1998.”