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American Morning

Patients Bill of Rights Takes Center Stage on Capitol Hill

Aired June 19, 2001 - 09:04   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now, looking at the future of your health care, the debate over a patients' bill of rights is back on Capitol Hill this morning. It's the first major legislation to reach the floor since the Democrats took majority control of the Senate.

Our congressional correspondent Kate Snow joining us, live, from Capitol Hill with the latest.

Kate, good morning.

KATE SNOW, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Daryn.

That bill was set to come up today in the Senate, but in a sign of what may be to come here and the battles that will ensue over the patients' bill of rights, it's actually being put off just a little bit. They're not going to debate the actual bill today, but it will certainly -- this topic will certainly be coming up.

This is the first major piece of legislation that the Democrats, in their new role as Democratic majority in the Senate, are trying to put on the Senate floor. It is a bill that the Democrats very much like but Republicans said late yesterday that they are concerned that they haven't had enough time to look at some last-minute changes that were made late last week.

Now Democrats say those change were nothing more than technicalities. They were making sure that the language wouldn't permit people to go after their doctors, to sue doctors but rather to sue their HMOs or medical plans. They also tightened some language referring to when you can go to court. They wanted to make it so - make it very clear that if it's possible to take cases out of court and to settle them out of court, they wanted to make that a possibility and not make people rush to the court system.

Republicans say they want to make sure that those changes, though, aren't substantive changes. This underlying bill, of course, deals with the right to sue people's HMOs depending on the case. In the Democratic version of the bill, patients would go either to state or federal court. State courts -- state suits would be governed by state laws and then in federal court, the upper most limit of damages that a person could receive would be $5 million under the Democratic bill. Republicans have a different idea. The White House has a different idea about what they want to do. They prefer a bill that's known as Breaux-Frist. That bill would actually take suits only to federal court and it would lower the cap. It would make it so that you couldn't get as much of - as many -- as big amount of damages out of the court in going to -- in seeking court action.

Daryn, back to you.

KAGAN: And, Kate, on another topic, the Senate, today, looking at energy and some relief perhaps to western states that some people might think is not nearly enough.

SNOW: That's right. Yesterday, you know the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, also known FERC, made a big decision here in Washington to extend what they call price mitigation efforts -- efforts at controlling the price of electricity out West. All of those commissioners, there are five of them, are going to be appearing this hour at a hearing before the Senate Energy Committee. They're going to be questioned.

The chairman of that committee talked with us earlier about what he wants to know from those FERC commissioners.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JEFF BINGAMAN (D), NEW MEXICO: What we're saying is we want them to explain how they believe this will work, how they believe this affects what has been charged in California in the past, do they think this will resolve the problem? I think it's a major step forward what they've done, but, obviously, the devil's in the details. We need to know the specifics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNOW: Senator Bingaman saying that in their hearing today they hope to assess whether or not there is still a need for legislative action to legislate price caps for electricity out West -- Daryn, back to you.

KAGAN: All right. Kate Snow on Capitol Hill, thank you.

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