Don Nickles: “I wish to compliment the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, for his enrollee choice proposal. I think it is an outstanding…”

“I wish to compliment the Senator from Wyoming, Mr. Enzi, for his enrollee choice proposal. I think it is an outstanding proposal. I urge my colleagues to be in favor of it. I would also like to make a couple comments dealing with the designated decision maker. Some people are acting like this is a grand compromise, that this is going to save employers: Employers are going to be exempt now because we are going to give this decision to a third party. When I ran a company, Nickles Machine Corporation, we had a third party administrator. They handled all the administrative claims. They did a decent job. So I didn't have to do it, our company didn't have to do it. We hired them to pay the benefits, to harass the providers, to make sure that benefits were paid or weren't paid. They paid the right benefits, didn't pay the right benefits. They were hired guns to run the plan, to make the decisions, to negotiate with the hospitals, negotiate with the doctors--all those kinds of things.”