Democrats to beat drums for HMO patients

Benjamin Grove

Friday, April 14, 2000 | 11:04 a.m.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., stops in Las Vegas today as part of a Democratic Party road show designed to draw attention to health care reform.

Reid, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, is scheduled to appear at an event on UNLV's campus with Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., chairman of the Democratic Policy Committee. The committee is making stops in a number of cities to collect stories from patients about their health maintenance organizations and to build momentum for a patients' bill of rights.

The Democratic leaders want patients in HMOs to have the ability to sue the HMO if they are unfairly denied treatment. The Democratic leaders advocate a list of law changes that empower patients, including:

Featured at today's event is Anna Gonzales, 28, who was diagnosed with Hodgkins Disease in December. She said she has navigated a maddening maze of doctor referrals and her HMO, Health Plan of Nevada, has slowed her treatment.

"They have no right to be playing God with people's lives," Gonzales said Thursday. "They were not paying attention to what was happening to me."

Such tales are common but Congress has not passed legislation, Reid said Thursday.

"(Paitents) don't have the money of the health care industry, they're just sick people, common folk," Reid said. "They can't compete with the massive lobbying organizations who tell lies and distort the facts."

Last year the House passed a bill that went much further to empower patients than a version passed in the Senate. A "conference committee" made up of members of both the Senate and House was to convene to reach a compromise, but that meeting has not been scheduled.

"I think what we have in the House is the bare minimum," Reid said. "They truly passed a patients' bill of rights. What we (in the Senate) passed was a patients' bill of wrongs. What we need to have is doctors taking care of patients and we can't do that anymore. We have decisions being made by clerks."