Rob Andrews: “Mr. Speaker, I did want to speak tonight about the efforts of the members of the Committee on Education and the…”

“Mr. Speaker, I did want to speak tonight about the efforts of the members of the Committee on Education and the Workforce to bring to this floor a vote on our ideas of how managed care health insurance companies can be made more responsible and accountable to people. If we travel the country and listen to people of every neighborhood, every region, every economic group, every racial and religious background, there is one common refrain. That is that the managed care industry is out of control. The stories are legion. It is the story of the person who cannot get a referral to a specialist, a cardiologist or neurologist or an audiologist; stories about people whose children need another 6 weeks of speech therapy, but cannot get an extension under the contract because the managed care company will not interpret the contract that way. It is about people who travel out of town and find out that their out of town health benefits are meaningless because you basically have to travel back to wherever you came from for anything short of a dire emergency room problem. It is a matter of people going to emergency rooms and being treated for very serious problems, like collapses or chest pains, and then being told weeks or months later that it was not really an emergency, that they have to pay the bill themselves.”