Frist Patients’ Rights Bill Needs ‘Push’ From Bush, Kondracke Writes in Roll Call

The patients' bill of rights (S. 889) proposed last week by Sens. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), John Breaux (D-La.) and James Jeffords (R-Vt.) and endorsed by President Bush "isn't likely to become law unless Bush undertakes a concerted campaign to pass it," Morton Kondracke writes in a Roll Call opinion piece (Kondracke, Roll Call, 5/21). The bill would afford all patients with private health insurance a "slender" right to sue their health plans after exhausting an appeals process by an outside review panel. Patients could only sue health plans in federal court, not state court, and awards would be capped at $500,000. The law allows states that have a patients' rights law in place to be exempt from the federal law if they can prove that the state law's provisions are "consistent with federal law" (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 5/16). Kondracke states that the proposal is opposed by "most Senate Republicans," who believe that it grants too broad a right to sue, and by most Democrats, who believe that that right is not broad enough. However, what the bill "does have going for it is that it's a middle-ground solution," Kondracke writes. Despite Bush's endorsement, the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords measure attracted no other co-sponsors in the Senate, and no companion bill in the House has been offered, although Kondracke says that "House GOP leaders presumably would be inclined to favor a measure backed by the president." Thus, Bush would have to "unite House Republicans" around the proposal, "then persuade conservatives in the Senate to back it." The likelihood of this outcome is uncertain, however, as Sen. Don Nickles (R-Okla.) is leading a group of senators who feel the bill is a "serious expansion of federal power into an area that's been the prerogative of the state." In addition, "no apparent progress" was shown in a meetingearlier this month between House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), White House policy adviser Josh Bolten, Rep. Charles Norwood (R-Ga.) and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) -- a supporter of the more expansive patients' rights proposal (S. 283) offered by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.), John Edwards (D-N.C.) and Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.). Thus, Kondracke concludes: "The likeliest outcome is a stalemate, with no bill able to win the necessary 60 votes in the Senate. This would surely be used as a 2002 campaign issue by Democrats, but at least Bush would be able to say Republicans tried to pass something -- a compromise, at that" (Roll Call, 5/21).