Press Conference on the "Patients' Bill of RIghts"
Statement
Press Conference on the "Patients' Bill of RIghts", with Senators Daschle (D-SD), McCain (R-AZ), Kennedy (D-MA), Harkin (D-IA), and Edwards (D-NC)
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SEN. EDWARD: Well, Senator Kennedy, Senator Kennedy -- Senator Kennedy, those questions were too complicated. (Laughter.)
Thank you all very much for being here this morning. Now is the time and now is the place to take health care decisions away from HMO and insurance company bureaucrats and put them where they belong -- with families, doctors and nurses.
Back home in North Carolina -- everyone's heard these horror stories -- back home in North Carolina we have a young man named Steve Grissom (sp). Steve Grissom (sp) developed leukemia. Over time, he got sicker and sicker and sicker, to the point that his doctor, a heart specialist at Duke, had to put him on 24-hour-a-day oxygen. Then his wife changed HMOs. Some clerk sitting behind a desk somewhere working for that HMO decided that Steve didn't need oxygen. They literally took his oxygen away.
The American people deserve better than that. Yesterday I called Steve at home and told him the United States Senate is prepared to make sure that he and all American people get and deserve better than that. That's what we're here to fight about today. We've worked on this bipartisan bill -- Senators McCain, Kennedy, all these great leaders in the House -- we have real patient protection. We have rights that are enforceable. We need a Patients Bill of Rights, not a patients bill of "suggestions." (Laughter, cheers, applause.)
Across the street from where we stand today, on the United States Supreme Court are chiseled the words "Equal Justice Under Law." Well, what about equal justice for doctors, patients and nurses in the United States of America? That's what we're here about today. (Cheers, applause.) And that's what we're fighting for. But that's what the HMOs are against. That's what the insurance companies are against. They don't want equal treatment. They don't want to be treated like everybody else. They want to keep the special, privileged status that they have today. They want to maintain the special treatment that they've had in this country for years.
Well, we're going to change that. We're going to enact a law that treats HMOs and insurance companies the same way all of us and everybody in America is treated. We're going to give patients and doctors and nurses equal treatment under the law, just like it says on our United States Supreme Court right across the street.
MORE Jun 19, 2001 11:17 ET .EOF Thank you all very much for being here today. (Cheers, applause.)
And our next speaker is a man who has been fighting from day one for real patients' protections, for a real Patients' Bill of Rights, a real champion for this bill, Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa. (Cheers, applause.)
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