Greg Ganske

I spent the weekend reading the Starr report and the White House rebuttal. The President's DNA on Monica Lewinsky's dress is clear proof that the President had sex with a White House intern. This means that the President lied when he…

I rise today to offer some thoughts on what sorts of meaningful managed care reforms Congress must pass before adjourning for the year. At the end of July, the House approved a Republican bill which was advertised as addressing consumer…

a week ago we had a debate on the floor of Congress here concerning patient protection legislation. It has been clear all along that there were major differences that needed to be worked out between the Patient Bill of Rights, the bill…

today I am initiating a discharge petition to force the House to debate House Resolution 486, a rule for consideration of managed care reform bills. House Resolution 486 provides for the consideration of the Dingell- Ganske Patients' Bill…

I oppose the Doolittle amendment. If I thought that the Shays-Meehan language would prohibit a voter guide like this one, I would not support the Shays-Meehan language. But when I read the Shays-Meehan language, it seems to me clear that…

That would be my understanding, and let me just read from this letter from Blue Cross/Blue Shield Association and the Health Insurance Association of America. "As representatives of the health insurance and health plan community, we are…

I cannot speak. I am not a representative for that organization. All I can say is I am sure that that organization would like to see those provisions become law at some point in time, but the recognition is there that on this piece of…

I would sincerely hope that a discharge petition is not necessary, that the Republican leadership in the House would set a date certain for bringing this legislation to the floor and make sure that it is with a rule that is fair and not a…

A recent survey by Kaiser Family and Harvard interviewed 800 small business executives exactly on this issue. They found that even if there were a mild increase in the cost of a premium related to this, that only 1 to 3 percent of those…

I would hope that organizations like some of the ones that I have read tonight, all the other organizations that are signed on to passing this type of legislation this year would contact their Congressman and Congresswoman back in their…

If my colleague would yield, for the reasons that we have outlined tonight and in previous special orders, there is broad support by a number of organizations for this. I have eight pages here in fine type of endorsing organizations for…

I do not think I would want to be and I do not know too many of my Republican colleagues who would want to be on the record for giving an HMO legal immunity for causing somebody's death or disfigurement.

The cost of a liver transplant, in total, would probably be in the range of several hundred thousand dollars. This is not something that the Packevicz can afford.

I remember in our Committee on Commerce we had testimony by a medical reviewer. Her name was Linda Peno. She testified before our committee, and she admitted that she killed a man. She was not in prison, she was not on parole, she had…

Well, let us look at a little more detail at this. This is going to be a matter of contentious debate, if and when we can ever get the Republican leadership to allow this to come to the floor, and that is, what will be the cost of the…

What is wrong with having some minimum safety standards for plans that Congress 25 years ago give a total exemption to?

Significantly less than the question, which had a two-thirds majority positive answer. We often hear from the opponents to this, well, small business is really against this. All of those small businesses would stop covering their…

Let us talk for a minute about the cost of liability. We have heard a lot of inflated estimates of this. Texas, as you know, passed a liability provision taking away the exemption for HMOs in Texas. So one of the HMOs asked its actuarial…

We are actually seeing some of the nonprofit HMOs such as Kaiser, HIP, calling for Federal legislation for patient protections. They would like to see a national uniform standard so that their competitors who cut corners and needlessly put…

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…

let us go on with some of these survey findings. Proposal: Any basic managed care plan would be required to allow patients to see plan specialists when necessary. Do you support? 94 percent. Opposed, 2.1 percent. We are talking about the…

what we have with the managed care industry is we have a situation where they make more profit by giving less service, less treatment. By my mind, this is the only industry in this United States or anywhere where they get paid more for…

I have had a bill before Congress with over 300 bipartisan cosponsors that my Republican leadership will not allow to the floor. It would ban gag clauses which prevent doctors from being able to tell their patients all of their treatment…

I am going to talk about some more examples tonight, but it is not as if we have not had several bipartisan bills sitting here in Congress this year, last year, bipartisan bills in 1996 with over 300 cosponsors dealing with this problem…

I think we should make a distinction between the insurance industry and HMOs and the managed care industry. There are a lot of health insurance companies that provide health insurance policies to individuals. They do not have the liability…