Political Quotes

“I follow my colleague from Florida in saying that I agree that we should work together. In fact, last year this House passed and worked very hard on a bipartisan Norwood-Dingell bill, on managed care reform, but we have not seen any action in months. We should stop the delay in managed care reform. We do not need gimmicks or watered down proposals that wind up doing nothing for patients. In my home State of Texas, we passed these protections in 1997 included in the Norwood-Dingell bill, and there have been no massive premium increases or mass filing of lawsuits that are used against the bill. What Texas residents do have is elimination of gag clauses, open access to specialists, timely appeals processes, coverage for emergency care and holding the medical decision maker accountable. We do not need any more delays. We need to act this year on a bipartisan basis and pass this bill. Hopefully, the conference committee will at last meet after all these months and pass real HMO reform, and today we will have that opportunity with the motion to instruct the conference committee. We need HMO reform now.”