Greg Ganske: “we have some important issues coming up in this next week, I hope. One of those, I hope, will be a full debate with a…”

“we have some important issues coming up in this next week, I hope. One of those, I hope, will be a full debate with a fair rule on a patient's bill of rights. We have been working on this legislation for about 5 years, and when we had this debate here on this floor 2 years ago, a young man and his mother came up from Atlanta, Georgia, to see how the debate would go. This little boy's name was James Adams. When James was 6 months old, one night about 3 in the morning, he had a temperature of about 105 degrees. He was a pretty sick little baby. His mother phoned the 1-800-HMO number and she said, my little baby is really sick and has a temperature of over 104, and I think he needs to go to the emergency room. She was following the rules to get an authorization. The HMO reviewer at the end of that telephone line said, well, I guess that would be all right. I will authorize you to go to this one particular emergency room because that is where we have our contract. But if you go to another one, you are on your own. So Jimmy's mother said, well, where is it? And the voice at the end of the telephone line said, I do not know, find a map. Well, it turned out that this authorized hospital was clear on the other side of Atlanta, Georgia, at least 50 miles away. So, with an infant who was critically ill, a mom and dad who were not health professionals put little Jimmy in the car, they wrapped him up, and started their trek to the hospital.”