Tom Harkin: “I don't want my doctor doing my taxes, and I don't want my accountant deciding my health care needs. To me, that sort of…”

“I don't want my doctor doing my taxes, and I don't want my accountant deciding my health care needs. To me, that sort of brought it all home and pointed out what we are trying to do: let the doctors and health care professionals make the decisions, and not the accountants, on what kind of health care we need. As I said earlier, the stories we hear about the lack of medical care from people in HMOs in Iowa--again, this is the tip of the iceberg. We are going to hear a lot of stories. These are real people with real injuries and real hurt. We have to keep in mind that these are just the ones we know about. How many more that we don't know about are out there? I retold a story here about Eric, a 28-year-old man who was working and had a wife with two kids. He was helping out at a wrestling clinic and he had cardiac arrest. They rushed him in and he was resuscitated. His brain had been denied sufficient oxygen, so he needed special rehabilitation. The neurosurgeon recommended to his family to get him into rehabilitation. His insurance policy covered rehabilitation, but his insurance company refused to cover his care at a rehabilitation facility that specialized in brain-injured rehabilitation. So his family took him to another place in Iowa. He began his rehabilitation. The good news is that he had progressed very well.…”