This is the Texas law. I want to make it clear, because the answer to my first question was that there are not five or six pages of exceptions in Texas law.

We want to expand access to these clinical trials as much as is reasonable. In addition, access to clinical trials is critically important from a societal standpoint, because without an adequate number of people participating in clinical…

what we have done in the balanced Frist- Breaux-Jeffords bill is expand what passed in the Senate last year and take the position we were going to cover all diseases in clinical trials. I do not take that expansion as a point of criticism…

Please state what your amendment does. Clearly, you can sue your employer. The McCain-Edwards-Kennedy bill says you can sue the employer. How do you fix this? We clearly have to fix it. The trial lawyer makes 40 cents on the dollar and, in…

Another fundamental difference between Texas law and S. 1052 relates to the treatment of employers. When the Patients' Bill of Rights was debated in Texas, the legislature acted decisively to protect employers--and their employees--from…

I thank the Chair. The groups I will quote from have examined the legislation. It is in their interest to really read through the bill and not just the rhetoric. They include the National Federation of Independent Business, the National…

Dear Senator Frist: Our Company provides Health Coverage to all our employees that wish or can afford to enroll. . . . Our Company pays approximately 80 percent of the total cost of the annual premiums. . . . I strongly believe that our…

I rise in response to the amendment of the Senator from Arizona on clinical trials. I will spend the next few minutes reflecting on what clinical trials are and how many clinical trials are out there, the tremendous benefit and the power…

I rise to support the commitment, the vote we will take in a few minutes, to proceed. As the Senator from Massachusetts said, America is ready for strong patient protections. America is ready to hold HMOs accountable when they are making…

I want to comment for 1 minute on a statement made earlier on clinical trials to clarify it for people who are following the debate. We are going to have the opportunity to debate hopefully each of these patient protections to refine and…

can you name one insurance company or one HMO that has endorsed the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords bill?

we continue discussion this afternoon on the Patients' Bill of Rights. Most of the morning we have spent discussing the differences between two bills, the only two comprehensive bills that have been introduced to the Senate. One is the…

I thank Senator Breaux and Senator Jeffords for their outstanding participation in putting together the Frist- Breaux-Jeffords Bipartisan Patients' Bill of Rights of 2001. This is a bill that we have jointly worked on aggressively over the…

There have been two bipartisan--ours is tripartisan--Patients' Bill of Rights bills introduced in the Senate, and I think it will be useful to contrast the two bills as we go forward to educate our colleagues but also to educate people who…

No. 3, we require health plans to provide consumers with comprehensive information about their new rights. We provide all the new rights, but we need to make sure the consumer, the patient, receives them in a way that they can truly…

But is the Senator aware that there is not one HMO, to the best of the sponsors' knowledge, that has endorsed our bill, or insurance company, and is the Senator aware that over 362,000 physicians from 70 different organizations have…

Clearly, much of the debate centers on what the cost of this bill will be. We both have patient protections. We want to give rights to patients that they deserve, rights to make sure we have medical decisions made by doctors and patients…

Mr. President, I very briefly want to say that much of the debate over the last several weeks has been on how we can best improve the system, modernize the system, reform the system, and consolidate, streamline local control, and have more…

My great fear is, if this amendment passes, let's say we put $22 billion in, you have destroyed the accountability, the heart and soul of this bill, the opportunity to give that seventh grader the opportunity to have the diagnosis made of…

the question I want to address to my colleague from Minnesota has to do with the testing. I think it is worth talking about because I have done the very best I could to make the case that for the individual child it is important to make…

If this amendment is adopted, we are in a significant way putting at risk the entire bill because accountability is the heart and soul of the bill. This is where I think the real progress will be made; that is, making the diagnosis so we…

Let me just finish for a few minutes and then I will be happy to yield. I want to walk through several of these concepts. As a physician what is it similar to? I mention somebody coming through that door to see, not Senator Frist, Dr…

First, the Senator from Minnesota just said he thinks we will rue the day we decided to assess the students. My assumption was that he feels all students should not be tested, that we already know what the problem is. I thought that was…

I rise in opposition to the Wellstone amendment. I look forward to the debate over the next several hours. I think the amendment comes back to some of the fundamental questions asked about this bill. It will give Members on both sides of…

I rise to speak on the 20-year anniversary of a truly remarkable event which, at the time, no one in the world would have envisioned its impact--its impact on people throughout the United States and on people throughout the world--indeed…