Obama’s Patients’ Bill of Rights: One Important Right is Missing, Thanks to Corporate Spin and Fear-

[cornermouse]

(The title I would have chosen would have been Unpalatable Facts About HCR)

http://www.prwatch.org/node/9210

The insurance industry defeated many attempts to pass a Patients’ Bill of Rights in the 1990s and 2000s, despite considerable bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. It did this by funneling millions of dollars through a big PR firm it hired to set up a front group -- the Health Benefits Coalition -- whose sole purpose was to scare people away from the legislation. The industry also had one especially important ally: Obama’s predecessor in the White House, George W. Bush. Bush threatened to veto any Patients’ Bill of Rights that he (read: the insurance industry and its business allies) didn’t like. Lawmakers were never able to agree on a single bill that Senators and House members could agree to (the House approved a weakened version of the bill Bush presumably would sign but the Senate refused to weaken its bill), so they eventually just gave up.

Obama is correct in stating that some of the consumer protections that will take effect in September are among those that would have been enacted years ago, had Bush and the insurance industry not blocked them, but he is being somewhat disingenuous in stating that those specific protections “made up the original Patients’ Bill of Rights.”

The reality is that the original Patients’ Bill of Rights would have accomplished something else that many patient’s have long sought: it would have expanded their right to sue their insurance companies for, among other things, wrongfully denying coverage for needed medical care.

An expanded right to sue was the provision in the original Patients’ Bill of Rights the insurers and their friends in the business community and the White House hated most, and it is the one provision that is conspicuously absent from what Obama labeled a Patients’ Bill of Rights. The fact that a right-to-sue provision was not included in the reform bill Obama signed is a testament to the continuing ability of the insurance industry and its corporate allies to call the shots in Washington when it comes to legislation that really might hurt their profits.

[msongs]

1. aim low and settle for less - that's the motto nt

[cornermouse]

7. Yep.

[Javaman]

11. The enemy of the merely okay; is the good. nt

[sandnsea]

2. But there is an independent review board

with a 3 day expedited hearing in the case of medical emergency. The government denies care too, I'm sure everyone is aware that single payer would do the same.

http://www.moolanomy.com/2587/health-care-reform-appealing-a-health-insurance-claim-denial-mmarquit01/

[cornermouse]

6. Ahem.

http://www.moolanomy.com/terms/

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[amborin]

3. just one more feature giving corporations total & uncontestable control

[cornermouse]

8. No words, just

:(

[AnArmyVeteran]

4. Give in, give up, cave in, retreat, betray, all mottos of lawmakers owned by corporations.

And screw the people who put their corrupt asses in office.

[cornermouse]

9. Yep.

[eridani]

5. The right to sue is often as useful as locking the barn door after the horse gets away

Dear Mr and Mrs Sarkisian:

You were right that we wrongfully denied your daughter Nataline a liver transplant. But the fact that she died before you successfully sued us on the issue has saved us a whole lot of money.

Thanks bunches!
Cigna

[cornermouse]

10. I see the right to sue more as a club to hold over their heads

to "encourage" them to do the right thing.

[eridani]

12. It's a club made of styrofoam

If they deny claims or coverage in order to save millions, fines or settlements in the area of thousands are not a threat at all, just a cost of doing business.

[harun]

13. How would they stop someone from suing?