Congressional debate over managed care and consumer rights is "about protecting the incomes, jobs and turf of the health-care system's biggest and richest vested interests."

• Under the banner of consumer protection, legislators are wrestling with the complaints of specialist physicians who have been losing their patients, fees and autonomy, those of insurance and managed-care companies whose profits have sunk in competition for patients, and those of employers who pay for much of the coverage.
• "It's all over the place, all under the guise of consumer bills of rights," said Trish Riley, executive director of the National Academy for State Health Policy in Portland, Maine, an association of state health officials and lawmakers.
• So far, said Paul Ginsburg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, a research group in Washington supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the providers, primarily doctors, are winning. "Elected officials feel their unhappiness," Ginsburg said. "It's the providers who are organizing and saying, 'This is what you want to do.' The quip going around is that this is physician protection, not consumer protection."

References

• Kilborn, Peter. In Managed Care, 'Consumer' Laws Benefit Doctors. New York Times, 16 Feb 98.

© Jeff Sutherland 1995-98