Daschle predicts passage of patients' rights bill

From Dana Bash
CNN Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Despite a veto threat, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Tuesday he has the votes to pass a Democratic-backed HMO reform bill that would guarantee patients a right to sue insurers.

Democrats expect to take up their patients' bill of rights -- sponsored by Sens. John McCain, R-Arizona, Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, and John Edwards, D-North Carolina -- next week.

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said over the weekend that President Bush would veto the bill if it is passed by Congress.

"I'm hopeful that he won't do what some of his people have indicated, and that is veto the legislation," said Daschle, D-South Dakota. "There is broad support. And I'm confident that when it reaches his desk that he'll at least consider a change of heart and support it, as important as it is."

VIDEO Congress and President Bush battle over a proposed patients' bill of rights. CNN's Rea Blakey reports (June 12) Play video (QuickTime, Real or Windows Media)

The bill would give patients the right to have cases heard in state court, where jury awards tend to be higher, or in federal court. Punitive damages would be capped at $5 million but there would be no cap on damages for pain and suffering.

The Democratic effort got a boost Tuesday when Rep. Charles Norwood , R-Georgia, endorsed the Democrats' compromise version. Norwood, a key House Republican, was a sponsor of his party's patients' rights bill in the House. A spokesman for Norwood said the congressman would break ranks with the GOP because his own negotiations with the White House have broken down.

Norwood had been negotiating with the White House for compromise language on patients' rights to sue health maintenance organizations, but gave up because he did not think there was "any chance of getting reasonable compromise."

"It had proven to be a bridge far too wide to come up with something in advance of Senate action to satisfy supporters of a real right to sue," said a Norwood aide. "It's coming up on the Senate floor and he's gotta be for one or the other now."

Daschle said he is not sure he has enough votes to stop a filibuster in the Senate. But Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, said Republicans have no plans to filibuster the Democratic-backed managed care bill.

Frist, John Breaux, D-Louisiana, and Jim Jeffords, I-Vermont, are sponsoring a White House-backed version of HMO reform. Norwood does not agree with the Frist-Breaux-Jeffords bill because its $500,000 cap for pain and suffering is too low to provide a fair remedy, an aide said.

The White House-backed bill would require patients to first go through an independent review process before heading into court. And they could sue only in federal court, where damages for pain and suffering would be capped at $500,000 and punitive damages could not be awarded.

One key senator said Democrats are banking on Bush vetoing the bill so they can accuse him of being in the pocket of insurance companies and deaf to the concerns of patients fed up with their HMOs. By the same token, the senator said the White House is convinced the public dislikes frivolous lawsuits and will support a Bush veto aimed at preventing them.

Sponsors of the various bills, plus Minority Whip Sen. Don Nickles, R-Oklahoma, have been invited to a meeting Thursday morning at the White House with administration officials to try to find a compromise the president would be willing to sign.

A senior Democratic aide said Democrats believe the White House veto threat is a bluff, but the only way to know for sure is to test it with congressional approval of the McCain-Kennedy-Edwards bill.

Frist, Breaux and Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Mississippi, met with White House officials Tuesday morning to try to come up with a strategy for a bill that would achieve the GOP goal of limiting lawsuits.

"Is this going to be a lawyer's-right-to-sue bill? That's the fundamental difference," Lott said.