Frank Pallone: “What the gentleman is bringing up again is so important, because we had a forum in New Jersey with Senator Torricelli…”

“What the gentleman is bringing up again is so important, because we had a forum in New Jersey with Senator Torricelli and myself in my district, and the people that came and talked about the problems they had with managed care, their biggest concern was the bureaucracy of having to deal with a denial; in other words, denial of certain services, denial of certain equipment, and how they had to go about appealing that or finding someone who would hear their case. I just could not believe the hours and hours parents or a relative would spend trying to get through that bureaucracy to try to have someone hear their case on appeal, or whatever the grievance procedure is. I think that that is a very important part of the legislation that we are talking about here today, because how many people can do that? A mother maybe can do it for her child if she is not working, but most of the time you have to call during the day, and a lot of people just cannot take the time to go through the morass that has been set up in these organizations. Again, I just want to say to the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Ganske) that the reason it is so valuable to have the gentleman here tonight if he is just pointing out how common-sense these patient protections are.”