Greg Ganske: “we are about ready to head home on recess, so I want to speak to my colleagues about something that I think that we…”

“we are about ready to head home on recess, so I want to speak to my colleagues about something that I think that we should address when we come back from this recess. That is the issue of patient protection legislation. We have been dealing with this for several years. I have just a few minutes left before we close down for the evening. This is a really important issue. HMOs are making hundreds of thousands if not millions of decisions each day that can adversely affect the health and lives of the people who are supposed to get their insurance from them. Mr. Speaker, remember a few years ago the movie As Good as It Gets? We had Helen Hunt talking to Jack Nicholson during the movie about her son who had asthma and was not getting the proper authorization for treatment by her HMO. She then went into a long string of expletives about her HMO, and I saw something happen in a movie theater I never saw happen at any other time. People stood up, applauded, and clapped for the sentiment that Ms. Hunt was expressing about her HMO.”