We need to start here and find ways to give patients more control over their health care by giving them more responsibility for payment-medical savings accounts, for example. Access to information is critical to managed care as far as the senator is concerned. The Patient Bill of Rights, passed earlier this year, gave patients greater access to grievance resolutions so they could find ways to get services they might be denied. The bills also assured physicians the right of notification so that they had adequate time to apply to participate in a managed care program. Since the passage of this law, I've talked to doctors who feel that their liability rates are now stabilizing.
Nonprofits exist and have grown because of tax breaks.
Senator Dale Shugars is working hard on this issue as chair of the Senate Health Policy and Senior Citizens Committee. Sen. Posthumus says Doctor Kevorkian is focusing attention on the small percentage of cases in which a patient or a doctor takes an action that leads to death. People have confused that with the right to die naturally. We need to assure in legislation that families and hospitals have the ability to allow patients to have a pain-free and natural death. The Senate is strong in its position that a doctor's taking a specific act to cause death is something that we can't condone in Michigan health care.