 
June 21, 2001 Dear Senator McCain: I would like to correct, for the record, your statement in recent interviews that every single physician and nurse organization supports the Patient Bill of Rights. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has strongly opposed this approach and subsequent bills since first introduction. We ask that you correct the record and that your future statements reflect it accurately. This is ironic because our organization was the first to call for a Bill of Rights, which should better be called a Bill of Freedoms. This is posted on our web site at www.aapsonline.org/aaps/patients/billrts.htm. We first proposed this in 1995. The PBOR is really a bill of goods. It loads still more onerous and costly federal regulations onto the insurance industry, not just the managed care industry. It will increase premiums, decrease the availability of insurance plans, and line the pockets of lawyers and bureaucrats--just as the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill did. Insurance may now be slightly more portable, at a very high price--for people who can still get it. Many insurance plans just vanished in its wake. Abusive managed care was made in Washington, D.C. One of its major architects was Senator Kennedy, in the HMO Act, which accorded favorable treatment to such entitities. The worst plans are taking a well-deserved drubbing in what remains of the free market. We know what Senators Kennedy and Clinton want: a total federal takeover of American medicine. That will mean managed care without any escape (reread the Clinton Health Security Act). They are methodically crafting legislation that will achieve their goal, piece by piece, year by year. They strenuously oppose any legislation that will increase patient freedom. For example, they can be counted on to fight any expansion of the crippled medical savings account concept in the Kennedy-Kassebaum bill. Why are you helping them?
Jane M. Orient, M.D. |