Bill of Rights' for Patients Step Toward Improving Health Care
USA TODAY, 02/23/1998By Robert A. Clifford
The role of the federal government in health-care reform boils down to a question of priorities: Is the purpose of reform to secure access to health care, to stem the rising cost or to guarantee equal rights to everyone?
President Clinton apparently answered that in his executive order to all federally sponsored health-care programs implementing a "patient bill of rights" that guarantees access to specialists and the right to appeal health-maintenance organizations' rulings ("Patient bill of rights ordered for all federal health plans, News, Friday).
As a personal-injury attorney, too often I see the patient who has suffered unnecessarily waiting for a medical procedure or treatment inexplicably denied under a health care policy with no timely recourse.
The time has come for HMOs and the business curmudgeons to stop shaping the future of health care in this country pitting the interests of patients and doctors against one another.
Although the federal government has been unable to deal comprehensively with health care, the president proactively empowering patients is a step toward allowing health care to be driven, not be a profit incentive, but by patients' best interests.
Robert A. Clifford
Clifford Law Offices
Chicago, Ill.
