Byron Dorgan: “As we near the summer of this legislative session and discuss the agenda remaining for this Congress, I want to raise…”

“As we near the summer of this legislative session and discuss the agenda remaining for this Congress, I want to raise, as my colleagues and I have for many, many days in this Chamber, one of the pieces of legislation we want considered in the Senate during this session of the Senate. That legislation is the Patients' Bill of Rights. About 160 million Americans are now enrolled in managed care organizations. HMOs--health maintenance organizations, one of the main types of managed care--can save money and they can improve care. But by the same token, managed health care organizations can cause real serious problems for many Americans. I want to describe just a few of them and describe why we believe a Patients' Bill of Rights should be enacted by this Congress. To describe part of the problem with managed care organizations, let me tell the story of a woman who had just suffered a brain injury. As she was lying in an ambulance being hauled to a hospital, with her brain swelling, she advised the ambulance drivers that she wanted to be taken to the hospital that was farther away, rather than the nearest hospital. She survived and was asked later why she issued directions to be taken to the hospital farther away. She said she had learned a lot about the hospital that was nearest to the ambulance at that point, and it was a hospital that by reputation had made health care a function of its profit and loss statement.”