Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
Two years ago, when I was a State Senator in California, I worked with my colleagues there to pass one of the strongest patient bill of rights packages in the Nation. Other States, Texas, New Jersey, about 30 in number, have adopted similar strong patient protections. But now, under the most recent capitulation to the insurance industry, these strong patient bill of rights protections around the Nation are preempted by Federal law.
Brought to us by those strong champions of States' rights, this capitulation threatens to take away hard- fought patient protections enacted around the Nation. The new policy evidently is: we believe in States' rights, except where they collide with the rights of the insurance industry, and then the heck with the States. That is no kind of policy for this country.
I urge support for the Dingell-Ganske patient bill of rights that protects and preserves the relationship between patient and physician. It has doctors making medical decisions, not insurance company bureaucracies. It is the real patient bill of rights, the one we have fought for for 6 years, the one we must pass for this country.