Greg Ganske: “I am going to speak for a while today about an issue that has been before Congress for several years now and that will…”

“I am going to speak for a while today about an issue that has been before Congress for several years now and that will be an important issue in the 107th Congress that will start in January, and that is the issue of providing patient protection legislation to all the people in this country, protection from abuses by managed care organizations, HMOs. Let me just review for my colleagues, maybe some of the new colleagues who may still be here in Washington after their orientation, where we have been; why we want to do this legislation; why 85 percent of the people in this country think that Congress should pass a strong, a real patient protection bill of rights and it should be signed by the next President of the United States. A few years ago, there were a series of articles in the New York Post. They had headlines like these, HMOs cruel rules leave her dying for the doc she needs; or this headline, these are the types of headlines that people have seen all around the country, they are not just localized to New York City, The New York Post, what his parents did not know about HMOs may have killed this baby.”