Mastectomy Hospital Bill in Congress

From Snopes:

H.R. 135, the Breast Cancer Patient Protection Act of 1997, in the 105th Congress. The bill sought to "amend the Public Health Service Act and Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to require that group and individual health insurance coverage and group health plans provide coverage for a minimum hospital stay for mastectomies and lymph node dissections performed for the treatment of breast cancer." Among other provisions, the proposed law mandated that the benefits of patients covered under group insurance plans not be restricted "for any hospital length of stay in connection with a mastectomy for the treatment of breast cancer to less than 48.

*snip*

Although most efforts to see this bill passed urge supporters to affix their names to some type of petition, we believe the most effective course of action is for advocates of this legislation to contact their congressional representative(s) directly, by U.S. mail, telephone, fax, or e-mail.​

No reason not to sign the petition AND contact your representatives.

The AMA endorses this bill (endorsement linky)

 

That sounds as crazy.

It really seems to me that it would be more costly to deal with the infections and problems that would arise from lack of care...but then maybe I don't know what hospital stays cost. Perhaps the gamble of a few major complications and deaths is worth the monetary risk....

Besides the whole decency and humane thing (which doesn't seem to enter into insurance companies' equations).

 

So we have insurance company rep's and politicians dictating how long a patient stays in the hospital. :BangHead:

I guess the only way we can guarantee excellect life-long heath care is to become a Washington politician.

BTW, you are many times more likely to pick up an infection in the hospital than you would at home.

And given the low staffing levels in hospitals now-a-days, it's not a bad idea to encourage sending those patients home if possible.

But only if there is an assurance of strong follow-up care at home.

Rob

 

No sir it is the hospitals and doctors who are culpapble as well. In the end whether is is the ins. company, politicians, hospitals, or doctors it is all about the money.

 

It looks like a good bill to me. I just signed the petition.

 

In New York, it's 48 hours. There were too many problems with newborns that weren't immediately apparent.

I thought that had changed everywhere.

 

I was in the hospital longer after the birth of my children than after the mastectomy.
Praise the Lord I had no problems. And a nurse came to the house three or four times to check on things.

 

signed the petition and am contacting my reps.

I was one of those women who got sent home 24 hours after childbirth and ended up back in the hospital four days later and stayed there for 2 1/2 months, and unable to walk without assistance of a walker for another year after that. :BangHead:

 

We need to reverse the takeover of health care by the government, not continue to increase it.

The Congress has no power granted it by the U.S. constitution to determine how long a patient should stay in a hospital, regardless if one thinks the Congress doing so is good, bad, or indifferent.

 

Interstate commerce, maybe?

 

I think the government should determine public healthcare policy. One of the duties of government is to look out for the general welfare of the people.

 

There should be no such creature as "public health care policy". The last time I checked health care is administered to individual people, not to some amorphous "public".

 

Can you find anywhere in The Federalist Papers(here's a link - www.foundingfathers.info/federalistpapers/fedi.htm) that would support that idea?

 

Yeah, interstate commerce.... set up clinics with examination tables exactly on state lines, so that a patient's right side is in one state and left side in another. That would do it.

This is not really comical as it may sound. For decades Mexican women have been crossing the River just in time to give birth so that their babies are, by consitutional edict, U.S. citizens.

 

And that is a gross misreading of the intent of the 14th Amendment that we have allowed to go on for way, way too long:

www.vdare.com/sutherland/weigh_anchor.htm

"This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons." - U.S. Senator Jacob Merritt Howard who introduced the proposed 14th Amendment to the Senate

 

"Policy" applies to the general public more than to individuals. Public healthcare covers hospitals, sewage & water, food inspection, doctors' licenses, quarantines, vaccinations, etc.

 

Good point, Daisy. I meant to say "public health care".

 

Even if Title 1 Section 8 was referring to the "General welfare of the People" ( and it is not) your assertion is still wrong in this context. Title 1 section 8 is referring to the collecting of taxes to support the government activities. It does not include in this section congresses duties in public policy.

The anti-federalists that criticized the constitution did so because they had a fear that it would be interpreted this way. Of course Madison told them they were just doom sayers and and were unnecessarily making a problem where none existed since the exact peramiters of congresses responsiblity were clearly layed out. He asserted that no one would or could interpret a broad use of powers as the specific powers were layed out. And if they are not specifically layed out then there is no authority to do it. As it turns out Madison was wrong. We have even today folks who want to assign a broad range of duties to congress that are not specifically laid out therefore unconstitutional. Madison determined that a bill proposed by congress to imrove roads was unconstitutional because it was not specifically enumerated in the constitution:

Veto of federal public works bill​

March 3, 1817​

To the House of Representatives of the United States: Having considered the bill this day presented to me entitled "An act to set apart and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," and which sets apart and pledges funds "for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water courses, in order to facilitate, promote, and give security to internal commerce among the several States, and to render more easy and less expensive the means and provisions for the common defense," I am constrained by the insuperable difficulty I feel in reconciling the bill with the Constitution of the United States to return it with that objection to the House of Representatives, in which it originated.​

The legislative powers vested in Congress are specified and enumerated in the eighth section of the first article of the Constitution, and it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised by the bill is among the enumerated powers, or that it falls by any just interpretation with the power to make laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution those or other powers vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United States.​

"The power to regulate commerce among the several States" can not include a power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses in order to facilitate, promote, and secure such commerce with a latitude of construction departing from the ordinary import of the terms strengthened by the known inconveniences which doubtless led to the grant of this remedial power to Congress.​

To refer the power in question to the clause "to provide for common defense and general welfare" would be contrary to the established and consistent rules of interpretation, as rendering the special and careful enumeration of powers which follow the clause nugatory and improper. Such a view of the Constitution would have the effect of giving to Congress a general power of legislation instead of the defined and limited one hitherto understood to belong to them, the terms "common defense and general welfare" embracing every object and act within the purview of a legislative trust. It would have the effect of subjecting both the Constitution and laws of the several States in all cases not specifically exempted to be superseded by laws of Congress, it being expressly declared "that the Constitution of the United States and laws made in pursuance thereof shall be the supreme law of the land, and the judges of every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." Such a view of the Constitution, finally, would have the effect of excluding the judicial authority of the United States from its participation in guarding the boundary between the legislative powers of the General and the State Governments, inasmuch as questions relating to the general welfare, being questions of policy and expediency, are unsusceptible of judicial cognizance and decision.​

A restriction of the power "to provide for the common defense and general welfare" to cases which are to be provided for by the expenditure of money would still leave within the legislative power of Congress all the great and most important measures of Government, money being the ordinary and necessary means of carrying them into execution.​

If a general power to construct roads and canals, and to improve the navigation of water courses, with the train of powers incident thereto, be not possessed by Congress, the assent of the States in the mode provided in the bill can not confer the power. The only cases in which the consent and cession of particular States can extend the power of Congress are those specified and provided for in the Constitution.​

I am not unaware of the great importance of roads and canals and the improved navigation of water courses, and that a power in the National Legislature to provide for them might be exercised with signal advantage to the general prosperity. But seeing that such a power is not expressly given by the Constitution, and believing that it can not be deduced from any part of it without an inadmissible latitude of construction and reliance on insufficient precedents; believing also that the permanent success of the Constitution depends on a definite partition of powers between the General and the State Governments, and that no adequate landmarks would be left by the constructive extension of the powers of Congress as proposed in the bill, I have no option but to withhold my signature from it, and to cherishing the hope that its beneficial objects may be attained by a resort for the necessary powers to the same wisdom and virtue in the nation which established the Constitution in its actual form and providently marked out in the instrument itself a safe and practicable mode of improving it as experience might suggest.​

James Madison,
President of the United States​