THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

PRESIDENT CLINTON URGES LEAD CONFEREES FROM BOTH PARTIES TO ACT NOW TO

PASS A STRONG, ENFORCEABLE, PATIENTS' BILL OF RIGHTS

Today, President Clinton will meet with a bipartisan group of members of Congress who serve on the Patients' Bill of Rights Conference Committee. He will underscore his concern about the delay in passing a strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights and ask the members for a status report. The President will reiterate his standing offer to provide any technical assistance necessary to advance the passage of this bill. He will point out that delaying the passage of this legislation has serious consequences, endangering the health of thousands of patients every day. The President will note that the bipartisan Norwood-Dingell Patients' Bill of Rights, which he has repeatedly indicated he would sign into law, passed over seven months ago. Yet, with very few working days left in this Congress, the Conference has not even discussed, much less agreed to, the crucial issues of how many Americans would receive new protections or how these new protections would be enforced. Finally, the President will express his concern that Patients' Bill of Rights not be further delayed or threatened by the inclusion of extraneous provisions that could further destabilize the insurance market and undermine the bill's prospects of passage.

CONFEREES HAVE YET TO MAKE PROGRESS ON ISSUES FUNDAMENTAL TO THE PASSAGE OF A STRONG, ENFORCEABLE BILL. Last October, the House passed the Norwood-Dingell Patients' Bill of Rights with overwhelming bipartisan support. This is strong legislation that the President would be proud to sign. Even after that landmark achievement, the Conferees have yet to address issues essential to the passage of a strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights. A strong Patients' Bill of Rights would:

• Provide protections for all Americans in all health plans, not coverage of some patients in some plans as provided under the Senate Republican plan.
• Include an enforcement mechanism that holds health plans accountable for actions that harm patients, not weak enforcement provisions that provide the illusion of security without real protections.

In addition, despite protracted negotiations, agreements have not been reached on provisions that:

• Guarantee access to needed health care specialists, allowing patients with life-threatening, degenerative and disabling conditions to have access to standing referrals to specialists.
• Ensure continuity of care protections, protecting patients from abrupt transition in care if their providers are dropped.
• Provide access to a fair, unbiased and timely internal and independent external appeals process, ensuring the independence of external reviewers by taking the decision about whether a case is eligible for an external appeal away from the health plan.

DELAYING THE PASSAGE OF A STRONG BILL HAS DEVASTATING CONSEQUENCES FOR AMERICAN FAMILIES. Unnecessary delay in passing legislation to curb insurance company abuse results in harm to thousands of patients daily and millions of patients annually. Each day without a strong Patients Bill of Rights results in: 14,000 physicians seeing patients harmed because a plan failed to provide coverage for a prescription drug; 10,000 physicians seeing patients harmed because a plan refused a diagnostic test or procedure; and 7,000 physicians seeing patients harmed because their insurance plan refused a referral to a specialist, according to a new analysis of Kaiser Family Foundation data by the Democratic staff of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee.

ACTION ON THIS ISSUE IS LONG OVERDUE. This legislation, endorsed by over 200 health care provider and consumer advocacy groups, is the only proposal currently being considered that meets the Administration's fundamental criteria: that patient protections be real and that court enforced remedies be accessible and meaningful. The President's record on this issue is longstanding and includes:

• Appointing a Quality Commission to examine potential quality concerns in the changing health care industry. In 1996, the President created a non-partisan, broad-based Commission on Quality and charged them with developing a patients' bill of rights as their first order of business.
• Challenging Congress to Pass a Patients Bill of Rights. In November of 1997, the President accepted the Commission's recommendation that all health plans should provide strong patient protections and called on the Congress to pass a strong, enforceable patients' bill of rights. He also called on the Congress to make passing the patients' bill of rights a top priority in his 1998, 1999, and 2000 State of the Union Addresses.
• Extending Critical Patient Protections to All Federal Health Plans. In February of 1998, the President directed the federal health plans, covering 85 million Americans, to implement the patients' bill of rights. Over the next year, critical steps were taken to meet this goal. For example: the Office of Personnel Management issued their annual call letter notifying their 285 health plans they needed to implement patient protections to participate in FEHBP; the Department of Labor issued a proposed regulation establishing a timely and fair internal appeals process with an expedited review process for urgent claims for the 120 million Americans in private employer based plans; the Administration issued an Interim Final regulation to implement patient protections for older Americans and people with disabilities covered by Medicare; and the President announced proposed rules to bring the Medicaid and S-CHIP programs into compliance.

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