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In Senate, left's gain boosts patients' rights

James Jeffords' defection from the GOP improves the prospects of the McCain-Edwards patients' bill of rights -- which the Vermont senator opposes.

By Amy Snow Landa, amednews staff. June 11, 2001.

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Washington -- Vermont Sen. James Jeffords' decision to leave the Republican party and put Democrats in control of the Senate is good news for the physician community in at least one respect: It likely will hasten action in the Senate on patients' bill of rights legislation.

"I think it's fair to say that this will undoubtedly move the process along" in the Senate, said AMA Immediate Past President Thomas R. Reardon, MD.

Sen. Tom Daschle (D, S.D.), who will replace Sen. Trent Lott (R, Miss.) as majority leader in June, said he planned to schedule floor debate on patient protection legislation immediately after completion of the education bill.

Senate Democrats are eager to move forward on patients' rights, a politically popular issue that has long been stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate. The AMA has been pushing for a patients' bill of rights for more than five years.

Before Jeffords' announcement, the patients' bill of rights sponsors, Sens. John McCain (R, Ariz.), John Edwards (D, N.C.) and Edward Kennedy (D, Mass.), had threatened to use parliamentary tactics that would force the Senate to debate patient protection legislation as early as this month.

Now those tactics are unnecessary, with Daschle about to take charge of the Senate's agenda.

"You can expect to see a quick move on patients' rights in June," said a spokesman for Kennedy, who will replace Jeffords as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

The improved outlook for McCain-Edwards is an ironic effect of Jeffords' defection from the GOP, given that Jeffords opposes the measure. In fact, the newly independent senator co-sponsored a narrower patient protection measure that will rival the McCain-Edwards legislation during Senate floor debate. [...]