Greg Ganske: “In light of all of these cases, and I can come to the floor every single night and talk about patients like these, and…”

“In light of all of these cases, and I can come to the floor every single night and talk about patients like these, and the gentleman could, too. In light of that, what does the American public think about all of this? Let me give a few of the findings from a nationwide health care poll done by a Republican pollster, the Republican pollster, by the way, who did most of the polling for the Contract With America. Let us just look at what some of the findings were in this recently conducted poll of over 1,000 adults nationwide. This was done May 1, 1998. Question: Would you say the overall quality of health care over the last 10 years has improved, stayed the same, or deteriorated? Improved, 34 percent; stayed the same, 15 percent; deteriorated, 46 percent. Fifty-five percent of Americans living in the West think the overall quality of care has deteriorated in the last 10 years. Question: Health care providers should be required to give their patients full information about their treatment, their condition, and treatment options. Do you support? Support, 7 percent; opposed, 1.6 percent. There is a provision in one of these bills, allow free communications, allow unrestricted communications between doctors and their patients. We would think that would be a given right.”