Byron Dorgan: “Mary is not getting paid to come to Washington but she desperately wants the Congress to pass this patient protection…”

“Mary is not getting paid to come to Washington but she desperately wants the Congress to pass this patient protection legislation. Mary told us that her daughter passed away on February 8, 1997. Donna had been to the doctor four times in 5 days for an upper-respiratory infection. The doctors couldn't quite figure out what was happening, but her symptoms kept worsening. On the evening of February 8, she was in a tremendous amount of pain, her mother said. She called the hospital. The hospital said: No, you can't bring your daughter to the hospital unless it is absolutely life or death, or unless you have a doctor's referral. She tried in vain to reach Donna's doctor, and an hour later her daughter, Donna, collapsed into a coma and died. After she died, as my colleague from New York will remember, her mother told us that she discovered that Donna had a blood clot the size of a football in her lung. Donna's doctor later told her mother that a $750 lung scan would likely have identified that blood clot and saved her daughter's life.”