Date: 1999-06-09
Speaker: EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON (democrat)
Chamber: H
State: Texas

Mr. Speaker. let me express my appreciation to the gentleman from New Jersey for taking the leadership and making sure that we get a chance to discuss such an important issue. Mr. Speaker. I am delighted to participate tonight in this special order. This is a very. very important issue. As I have sat and listened to the various presentations here. it occurs to me that. when a patient is admitted to a hospital. one of the first things that happens is that we take the history. and we want to know all of the individual signs and all of the individual differences of that patient. I wonder how the HMOs and the insurance companies can reconcile deciding that one size fits all after one goes to the extent of trying to determine what the individual differences are. Because it makes a difference in the way one begins to treat that patient. We have forgotten that in this industry. As a matter of fact. I am beginning to wonder if we have forgotten the patient altogether. because the insurance companies will place the physician out there with their instructions and almost dare them not to do anything else. The physicians are held accountable. not the insurance companies that dictate what they must do. That is not American. Nothing in the history of medicine in this country has allowed something like that to happen. In the. past. when a physician graduated and met the standardized test and assured the Nation that they had that body of knowledge mastered. they had permission to practice medicine. They no longer have that under the HMOs. They have to take the dictation from that HMO. Yet. they can be held accountable by the patients and the patients family. but not the HMO that dictates it. That is the most unfair thing that I have heard of. I cannot even imagine this being something that is happening as a routine way of doing business in health care delivery in this country. the super nation. the number one nation in the world. the 911 for the rest of the world. the Nation that every other nation expects to come to their rescue. and yet we cannot respect the patient as an individual. That is beyond my comprehension. This really has gone too far. The mere fact that we do not have the opportunity to bring back a course of doing business. this measure to the floor for honest debate is again unAmerican. It is unfortunate that we have to sign a discharge petition. I do not like the process of signing a discharge petition. We are placed in a position to do that. All 435 Members of this body will acknowledge that this is a problem in this Nation. and yet. we have to go to discharge petition signing to bring this measure to the floor. That is very difficult to believe. But. yet. I will proudly join the group next Wednesday and sigh this discharge petition because this is a number one concern of the people of this Nation. No one wants to feel that. if they had an emergency and go to the emergency room. they might be rationed in what might be the approach if it is felt that it might cost the insurance company too much if they began a procedure that might be too expensive. We have had testimony that there have been times when physicians were actually complimented because a patient died in the emergency room which saved money for the insurance company. Does this sound like America? Does this sound like the Nation that has brought forth some of the most innovative measures and approaches to any disease. more so than anywhere else in the world. and. yet. the people of this Nation have no access to that success. Yet. all of us have participated in paying for it because all of us pay for medical research. We simply must address this issue for what it is. If all of us went into a department store to get a suit. we would not want a suit that would fit anybody. we would want a suit that would fit us. That is what we want when we get sick. We do not want a one size fits all. We do not want it to be just a diagnosis that must follow the script verbatim. We have to get back to looking at patients as individuals and making sure that they get the treatment they deserve. All that we can say about this when it comes right down to it. people pay for their care. They pay for their care. and they do not pay for it for the purpose of insurance companies having a lot of money to invest so they can take a lot of money home. They pay for it because it is a service. a service that members of that insurance company of that particular plan should have access to the needed care. We are not talking about abuse of care. There are many measures that can determine that. We are talking about essential basic care that an individual deserves to have when that individual becomes ill. We are talking about looking at that patients history and making sure that that is considered when the doctors ordersare written. not just to pull out a preprinted sheet and follow it simply because that is what the insurance company dictated. Yet. the biggest frightening scare is to be held accountable for what their dictating brings about. There is something simply not right. This is a basic fundamental right that every patient ought to have is access to care where they are considered as an individual. There is a difference between a 25 year old and a 75 year old. and. therefore. often the approach to that patients diagnosis. although it might be the same. might be a little bit different. When we get away from that as a Nation. we have forgotten where we started. what this really is. This is really the health care industry. This is the industry that we are supposed to be able to have confidence to put our very lives in the hand of professional providers and feel certain that we can trust it. not just a simple sheet of paper that. if the doctor not follow it verbatim. then they are out a good stead with the insurance company. It is out of control. and we simply must do something about it. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey very much for having this special order. I do not think we can talk enough about this subject. This is basic and fundamental to every human being being seen as a human being in this country.