"You guys have some pretty good stuff here" If we let don't let drug companies charge for their medicine, we'll all end up taking aspirin." -- Oregon Rep. Cedric Hayden

The House of Representatives is poised to debate several bills that would refashion health insurance in America. These proposals have many provisions similar to those in the various versions of the "Patients’ Bill of Rights" the Senate debated in July. Some of the legislation would create new tax incentives and mechanisms for purchasing health insurance; others would add new regulations and new lawsuits to the health care system. The list of bills that may be enacted, in whole or part, includes:

The "Bipartisan Consensus Managed Care Improvement Act" (H.R. 2723) is the federal government’s latest misguided attempt at controlling health care. While the bill’s list of sponsors demonstrates that it is bipartisan, if it becomes the consensus approach, Americans in managed care would see few, if any, improvements. It gives them little more than an expanded ability to sue. In reality, this approach will only take money out of consumers’ checkbooks and put it into the pockets of trial lawyers, making health insurance less affordable for all Americans.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Click here for the Full Report (Word Document format) Using data from the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA), this study examines the agency’s main areas of responsibility for approving new health products for the third consecutive year. Among this study’s findings are:

In 1994, faced with the horror of having government bureaucrats make their health care decisions for them, the American public rejected the Clinton health care plan. On September 15, President Clinton told a union audience of his failed health care plan, "What I tried to do before won't work. Maybe we can do it another way. That's what we've tried to do, a step at a time until eventually we finish this."

Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Ted Kennedy (D-MA) have proposed legislation to establish a new federal program to buy health coverage for five million children. Sen. Hatch has characterized their proposal as the "free market approach" to insuring children. Unfortunately, neither the bill (S. 525) nor its funding mechanism (S. 526) have been fairly represented. 1. "This is not an entitlement."1