http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/whitehouse/la-op-bloche21mar21,1,6292885.story?coll=la-news-politics-white_house(free registration or try www.bugmenot.com )
WASHINGTON — Four years ago, then-Gov. George W. Bush cast himself as a champion of patients' rights. Pressed by Al Gore in their final presidential debate on whether patients should be allowed to sue health plans for wrongfully withholding care, he pointed to a pioneering Texas law passed on his watch. "I brought Republicans and Democrats together … to get a patients' bill of rights," Bush said. "We are one of the first states that said you can sue an HMO for denying you proper coverage."
But President Bush, it seems, has changed his mind. The Texas law he championed is now before the U.S. Supreme Court, and this week the administration will ask that the justices strike it down. More broadly, the administration will ask the court to abandon a body of recent precedents that expose the managed-care industry in many states to negligence suits for withholding of coverage and care. Legal accountability for denying coverage, it contends, could prevent the creation of "innovative health plans."
At the center of the dispute is a 30-year-old federal law, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, enacted to safeguard workers' fringe benefits. Because the vast majority of Americans younger than 65 obtain their health insurance through the workplace, the law applies to nearly all private medical coverage.
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