Inside the Battle over the Patients' Bill of Rights The Senate takes up a controversial bill this week that will make it easier for you to sue when you get bad medical treatment.White House correspondent John F. Dickerson and congressional correspondent Douglas Waller preview the fireworks.
Monday, Jun. 18, 2001
After a week of gabbing with Europeans cranky about his stands on
national missile defense and the climate, George W. Bush may be itching for
some old- fashioned deal-making back home, where he's already scored
triumphs on education and taxes. But then again, he may want to linger in
the departure lounge. Waiting for him is one of the most frustrating and
gridlock-producing pieces of legislation to bind up Washington in recent
years, which Democrats will force Bush to take up this week: the patients'
bill of rights.
Bill Clinton ran into a brick wall on the measure during his second
term and W may find that the bipartisan deals he got on taxes last month
and education last week were easy compared to passing a bill that gives
patients more clout with their health maintenance organizations. The stakes
are high for both sides, which have important constituencies to satisfy.
Republicans don't want to upset big business and HMOs by raising healthcare
prices while Democrats want their friends, the trial lawyers, to have the
right tools to sue over bad care. With the Senate now under Democratic
control, this is the first test for Majority Leader Tom Daschle to press
an issue that's been a winning one for his party, and for Bush to play
defense.
The White House had wanted to put off the patients' bill of rights for
the moment. And it could when Republicans controlled the Senate. Bush
wrapped his arms around Ted Kennedy to reach a compromise education bill.
But when Sen. John Edwards introduced his patients' rights measure last
February with Kennedy and Sen. John McCain, Bush couldn't seem to return
the phone calls. He wanted no part of their bill's provisions that allow
aggrieved patients to tie up HMOs in state courts and win up to $5 million
in jury awards. Bush also wasn't eager to strike any deal that would
burnish McCain, his bitter rival in the Republican presidential primaries.
Stalling worked for a while. White House aides got Republican
Congressman Charles Norwood to hold off sponsoring a similar measure in the
House with the promise that they'd negotiate a compromise with him. But "he
was being strung along," says GOP Congressman Greg Ganske, a cosponsor of
Norwood's bill. While they kept Norwood closeted in endless meetings, Bush
aides secretly helped write a bill more to their liking with GOP Sen. Bill
Frist and moderates John Breaux and Jim Jeffords. That measure channels all
suits into federal courts and limits jury awards for pain and suffering to
just $500,000.
But Bush's end run petered out when Jeffords' defection from the GOP
gave Democrats control of the Senate. Daschle ordered that the patients'
bill would be the next measure considered after education, not energy
legislation that Republicans had wanted. Fed up with the White House,
Norwood trashed the administration as inflexible and deceptive in a memo to
colleagues last week and made a public show of introducing his legislation
in the House. Now the White House has to take those defections seriously,
which affects their negotiating posture. Apply too much muscle and you
might lose moderates like Senator Lincoln Chaffee, who cares about this
issue and who last week was publicly flirting with pulling a Jeffords.
Bush has been trying to warm up to the other side but his pick-up lines
haven't been working. After a long cold period, he dispatched senior White
House aide Josh Bolton to meet with McCain and invited all the Senate
sponsors to a White House meeting last week. But it was mostly for
appearances. The Bolton- McCain huddle lasted only about 15 minutes and the
White House meeting "was a dog-and-pony show," admits a top Senate GOP
staffer.
The president also has to tend to conservative members in his own
party. Republican senators are drafting dozens of amendments to pick apart
the Democrats' measure. "It's going to be hit by armor-piercing
incendiaries," vows GOP conservative Phil Gramm. White House aides laugh at
Gramm's colorful opposition, but conservatives are angry about a series of
administration apostasies on education, taxes and defense. There is no
great rush to give Dashcle his first victory. But the White House knows
that passage may mean fighting through a filibuster threat from members of
its own party.
For all of the problems getting to a solution, both sides think after
years of failure, a deal might be possible. Bush has threatened to veto the
more liberal forms of legislation, but those who are now at the table with
him know that's just an opening bid. Bush is willing to shave away the
details to get a result. And this is a result that happens to be wildly
popular, with as many as 79% of Republican voters telling pollsters they
support a patient's bill of rights. The HMO lobby disputes that figure but
most Republicans see a bigger reality. "You can never win an argument that
people can't sue," says a GOP aide. "It's un-American. We need to get a
deal and move on." After a week in foreign lands, that's a language Bush
can understand.
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