An Open Letter to Nancy Johnson, 6th District (R)

Dear Representative Johnson:

You must realize by now that your "No" vote on the Patient's Bill of Rights is proving to be a tactical mistake much like your handling of the ethics charges against former House Speaker Newt Gingrich that nearly cost your seat in the 1996 election. As newspapers throughout your 6th district are recounting the abuses of HMOs, the publicity surrounding your continued dependency on PAC contributions from the likes of Oxford Health Plans and Cigna Corporation to finance your re-election campaigns, is creating doubt in the minds of many of your constituents as to just where your loyalty lays? Is it with their well-being and that of their families or is with the CEOs of insurance companies like Aetna who contributed nearly $17,000.00 in PAC money to your 1997-1998 re-election? Oxford Health Plans paid $15,000.00 into your coffers with Cigna Corp paying over $13,000.00 making these three among the top ten contributors to your 1998 re-election according to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP), and independent group that tracks campaign finance.

Having tether yourself to these special interests, it's getting more and more difficult to convince the "folks back home" that you voted against the right to sue our HMOs for denying us medical care resulting in injury or death because the bill would "create a systemic explosion of litigation." When taking you to task for your "No" on the Patients Bill of Rights, a recent editorial in the Dan bury News Times stated your explanation was "of course, the insurance industry's line." In fact, a recent article in Physician's Financial News reported that two years after Texas passed an HMO liability law "only a handful of cases have gone to court." The article went on to say that people don't want to sue their HMOs. They're looking for care that they believe they paid for and are entitled to under their plan. If they feel that they are treated fairly and that decisions are not financially motivated and are done honestly, then people aren't eager to run to the court system to punish the HMO.

Although the constituents of the 6th district couldn't depend on you to support the Patients Bill of Rights addressing the abuses of HMOs, the state's other 5 representatives did address them and voted to pass the bill including your party colleague, Christopher Shays. Unfortunately, you're now serving on the Senate-House Conference Committee on Patient's Rights. This newly constituted committee will work to reconcile the House version of the bill with the weaker Senate version. Among the congressional members serving on the committee, you and four others have accepted major campaign funding from managed care and/or the pharmaceutical industry. However, it's you who places number one among these committee members for accepting PAC money from the managed care industry as well as being the number one recipient of PAC money from the pharmaceutical industry according to1997-1998 data from the Federal Election Committee. In addition, you're ranked number four for receiving PAC money from the lobbying organization, Citizens for Better Medicare, a coalition founded and largely financed by the pharmaceutical industry. These lobbyists are working to block an expansion of prescription drugs to the Medicare recipients because drug companies, like Rhone-Plough, fear the addition of prescription benefits to the Medicare program might lead to price controls throughout the industry, a move that consumer groups long have advocated and is supported in national polls as well. Incidentally, Rhone-Plough contributed $467,575.00 in campaign financing in 1997-1998 some of which found its way that year into your re-election coffers according to CRP.

Based on these findings, few among your constituents would be surprised to learn that your efforts went to largely gutting a patient's right to sue an HMO for injury or death. It stands to reason that a reconciled bill coming out of the joint committee, minus a provision for suing HMOs, would be less onerous to the majority of your campaign contributors. We can't expect someone as indebted as you are to these special interests to favor a bill that's looking out for interests other than theirs.

Here in New Milford, our small community hospital is in financial trouble thanks in part to lawmakers like yourself who's acceptance of PAC money from the likes of those listed above are coloring your objectively and leading to decisions more often favoring these special interests. Special interests that force hospitals to take fees below the cost of providing proper care while extracting payment for medically necessary items like drugs at inflated pricing. In a recent news story in the New Milford Times, our hospital administrator is quoted as saying he didn't fully recognize the dramatic impact of "ratcheting down reimbursements" would have on the hospital's bottom line. The deficit for year-end may reach $1 million, the paper reported.

Seeking redress, we as voters in the 6th district can do what voters have done since the republic was formed and that's vote out the likes of you in favor of a representative who promises to be instrumental in legislation that provides needed relief from a health care system gone awry due to a compromised stewardship on the part of legislators like yourself.

Let me leave you with a quote from one of your fellow Republicans that sums up what is truly at stake with the raise of corporate America's influence on our congressional members: "Corporations have been enthroned....An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people....until wealth is aggregated in a few hands....and the Republic is destroyed." (Abraham Lincoln, 1865).

Sincerely,

Cathy Itri
member, Connecticut Coalition for Universal Health Care
member, Connecticut Small Business Coalition for Universal Health Care