Several Key Patients’ Rights Players Have Medical Backgrounds

Several key players in the patients' rights debate in Congress are health care providers. The following is a look at these members of Congress and their medical backgrounds, compiled by the Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report:

• Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.): Fletcher is one of several House Republicans working with the GOP leadership to create an alternative to the patients' rights bill (HR 526) proposed by Reps. Greg Ganske (R-Iowa), John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.), which mirrors the Senate bill (S 283) sponsored by Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and John Edwards (D-N.C.) and currently under debate (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 6/19). Fletcher, a family physician, served for two years before his election as CEO of St. Joseph Medical Foundation, a company that "managed medical practices" (Almanac of American Politics).
• Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.): Frist is a sponsor, with Sens. John Breaux (D-La.) and Jim Jeffords (I-Vt.), of the patients' rights bill (S 889) favored by President Bush. Frist was a heart and lung transplant surgeon with 250 transplants to his credit before his 1994 election. He established the Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Vanderbilt Medical Center and wrote a book about the "social and ethical issues" surrounding the procedure. Frist now "regularly" performs volunteer medical work in Washington, Tennessee and Sudan. Frist's brother Thomas runs HCA-The Healthcare Company, which owns and manages hospitals nationwide, and Bill Frist has $9 million in HCA stock in a blind trust (Almanac of American Politics 2000).
• Rep. Greg Ganske (R-Iowa): Ganske is a sponsor of HR 526, the House version of the patients' rights bill (S 283) sponsored by Kennedy, McCain and Edwards, favored by the Democratic leadership. Ganske is a plastic surgeon who has focused on reconstructive surgery for people with birth defects and those who have suffered accidents, burns and crimes. He has performed charity medical work while in Congress, traveling in 1996 to Peru to operate on children with cleft palates and other disfigurements (Almanac of American Politics 2000).
• Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.): Norwood was a sponsor, along with Dingell, of the patients' rights bill that the House passed in the last Congress, and he is currently a sponsor of HR 526 with Ganske and Dingell. Norwood had refrained from backing the bill in order to let President Bush "put his stamp on the issue," but earlier this month he expressed support for it (Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, 6/13). Norwood was a dentist before being elected to Congress in 1994. For three of the years that he ran his own practice, he was part of an HMO network, an experience which he has said, "was no way to go." He was president of the Georgia Dental Association in 1983 (Almanac of American Politics 2000).