Health - Patients' Bill of Rights

Patients´ Bill of Rights

Press Accounts

Lobbyists received $60m to fight HMO legislation
November 28, 1998

Associated Press

By Jonathan D. Salant

WASHINGTON - Insurance companies and their allies in the fight against new regulations for managed health care spent an average $112,000 per lawmaker to lobby Congress in the first half of this year.

The $60 million lobbying outlay was four times the $14 million-plus spent by medical organizations, trial lawyers, unions, and consumer groups to press for passage of the so-called Patients Bill of Rights, disclosure reports filed with the secretary of the Senate show.

Not all of the money went for lobbying on managed care, because many groups opposed to the changes also talked to members of Congress about other issues.

The $60 million lobbying tab is 50 percent higher than the $40 million that tobacco interests spent between January and June to kill legislation to raise cigarette taxes to curb teenage smoking.

The figure does not include $11 million spent on advertising against the managed care legislation, nor millions of dollars in campaign contributions that opponents of new regulation made in the just-concluded congressional campaigns.

The proposed regulations, which would govern health plans known as managed care or health maintenance organizations, are supposed to give patients more power to challenge decisions about their care.

Opponents said the restrictions would push the cost of health insurance plans so high that small businesses could no longer afford to insure their workers.

"They're high-paid lobbyists walking the halls of Capitol Hill, getting access to members in order to make their pitch on managed care reform," said Jim Manley, a spokesman for Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a proponent of the legislation.

The US Chamber of Commerce spent more money lobbying than any other group in the health-care debate, $8 million. "That's not just health care, it's environmental issues, it's labor policy, it's tax policy, it's work force training issues, and it's health-care policy," chamber spokesman Frank Coleman said. "Stopping trial lawyers and their agenda of allowing patients of HMOs to sue the companies that provide them the health care was a chamber top priority."

Both sides are gearing up to fight the battle again in the 106th Congress. President Clinton and Democratic congressional leaders have said the first order of business should be to pass new HMO regulations, and several Republican lawmakers also support new rules.

Meanwhile, the legislation's foes are planning strategy for next year. "This will be a large effort once again," said Dan Danner of the Health Benefits Coalition. "The stakes are very high."