Albert Russell Wynn: “We need to save Social Security first. We need to look forward to future generations. There may be, however, something…”

“We need to save Social Security first. We need to look forward to future generations. There may be, however, something that we can agree on and that is a Health Care Consumer Bill of Rights. I believe consumers need protection. The President has issued an Executive order saying that Federal employees, Medicare recipients, Medicaid recipients will all have that assurance. But we need it for all Americans. A recent California study showed that 42 percent of the patients in HMOs have encountered problems with their health care delivery service. My State of Maryland took the first step and implemented a guarantee to emergency room care. We need to do that. We also need to guarantee the security and privacy of medical records. We also need to ensure that Americans can gain access to health care specialists when they need them. Madam Speaker, we need to take the ``medicrats'' out of the health care business. We need to make sure that all Americans have a Health Care Consumers Bill of Rights.”