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April 19, 2024
Workers Compensation Bill 2024: One percent of employee’s salary to contribute to workers’ compensation fund in Kenya.

April 15, 2024
Colorado Worker Shows Head Injury Happened as a Consequence of a Knock on the Head at Work

April 4, 2024
Callfornia Division of Workers' Compensation Pharmacy and Therapeutics Committee Meeting Scheduled for April 17, 2024

April 3, 2024
California Division of Workers' Compensation Posts Adjustments to Official Medical Fee Schedule (DMEPOS)

A patients' bill of rights that is sure to heat up a simmering political battle in Washington will be proposed today by Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), a key ally of President Bush. The long-awaited introduction of the bill tackles questions concerning lawsuits aimed at health maintenance organizations (HMOs) and insurers.

Reuters reported today that Frist's plan "would give new protections to patients while setting strict limits on court awards against health plans accused of misconduct."

Presently, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) favor a similar patients' bill of rights, but without such strict limits on lawsuits. They were joined by Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) in introducing their bill, which faces a possible veto by Bush.

Frist's bill, co-sponsored by Sens. John B. Breaux (D-LA) and James M. Jeffords (R-VT), would "require patients to exhaust an independent, medical review process before taking disputes against HMOs and health insurers to federal court," Reuters reported. Once in court, damage awards would be limited to $500,000 under the bill, according to Breaux.

Frist, who gained fame as a prominent heart and lung transplant surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville in the mid 1980s, is in the vanguard of a Bush administration cabal that opposes the sweeping patient bill of rights by McCain, Kennedy and Edwards, whose edict, like Frist's, would ensure that all 167 million Americans with private health insurance would have access to emergency and specialty care. The far more liberal plan, however, would also permit jury awards as high as $5 million in federal court and unlimited punitive damages under state law.

Since that bill was introduced, the insurance industry cried foul, saying the bill would set off a landslide of frivolous lawsuits, and Bush followed suit by threatening a veto.