(CNSNews.com) – Buried in the thousands of pages of the health care bills drafted by Democrats in the House and Senate is a provision to protect insurance companies from legal accountability for benefit decisions that cause injury or death to patients, Republicans warned on Wednesday.
 
“You can sue your doctor for malpractice if he makes a mistake practicing medicine, but you cannot sue your insurance company when it makes a medical decision,” Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) said at the press conference near the steps of the Capitol. “That’s just wrong.”
 
Shadegg pointed to page 140 of H.R. 3962 and page 56 of S. 1796, which include language providing immunity for insurance companies, even if the actions they take result in injury or death. The language comes from section 514 (a) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) of 1974.
 
To illustrate the point, Florence Corcoran told her tragic story at the press conference while holding up a  photograph of her infant son and his death certificate.
 
“I keep these in my wallet every day,” Corcoran said, choking with emotion as she told how her son was stillborn 20 years ago after the insurance company denied hospitalization to treat toxemia. “I go through this so nobody else has to go through what I went through by losing my baby.”
 
“The issue here is when an insurance company practices medicine,” said Rep. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), who also is a physician. “That’s the issue -- going against the wishes of a doctor, going against the wishes of a second opinion, that they cannot be held accountable.
 
“We can’t allow that to happen anymore in the country,” Coburn said. “People have a right to hold those accountable that are practicing medicine.”
 
Republican lawmakers said the “deal” Democrats made with insurance companies behind closed doors while drafting the health care bills contradicts previous claims by liberals that insurance companies are not held accountable for harm they cause patients.
 
“She (Corcoran) was in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy when her health insurance company denied her doctor’s recommendation for hospitalization,” Shadegg read from one bright blue poster displayed at the event. “She got a second opinion, and they denied it again.
 
“During the last month of her pregnancy, the baby went into distress, and because she had been denied monitors and denied hospital supervision, the baby did not survive,” Shadegg said. “Our current system left her without a real remedy. This is unacceptable.”
 
“These are not my words,” Shadegg continued. “Those are the words of the late Senator Ted Kennedy spoken in June of 2001” about Florence Corcoran, who had sought Kennedy’s help after her efforts to sue her insurance company were rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in 1992.
 
As Kennedy said at the time:  “Patients should have the right to hold their [insurance company] accountable in court when its negligence causes the injury or death of a patient. … No other industry in America enjoys immunity from accountability for its actions, and the insurance industry does not deserve it either.”
 
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.) also spoke out about Corcoran on July 15, 1999.

“Let’s talk about a real person,” Reid said during debate on the Patients Bill of Rights Act in 1999. “Florence Corcoran is an example of the need to hold [insurance companies] accountable. She lost her baby because the [insurance company] refused the doctor’s request for hospitalization in the last days of her pregnancy.
 
“Today, even an HMO involved directly in dictating, denying, or delaying care for a patient can use a loophole in what we call ERISA to avoid any responsibility for the consequences of its actions,” Reid said on the same date. “The American people simply do not support that.”
 
“Of course they’ve been immoral all along in how they have treated people that they insure …. They are the villains,” read a poster featuring House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) remark from a July 30, 2009 press briefing.
 
“It’s almost immoral what [the insurance companies] are doing,” Pelosi said at another press briefing on Oct. 15.

“In Mrs. Corcoran’s case, the very case Senator Kennedy and Leader Reid talked about, the court ruled that Mr. and Mrs. Corcoran could recover nothing for the wrongful death of their son because Section 514 of ERISA prohibits any recovery,” Shadegg said in a press release. 

“Specifically the court said: ‘For all the foregoing reasons, we find that ERISA [S. 514] pre-empts the Corcorans’ tort claim against United and that the Corcorans may not recover damages for emotional distress under ERISA,’” he added. 

Yet, said Shadegg, “the Pelosi and Reid bills preserve, protect, and extend Section 514, leaving millions of potential workers and union members with no remedy if they are injured or killed by the denial of coverage by a union or employer health care plan.”

Page 140 of the House bill reads: “Nothing in paragraphs (1) or (2) shall be construed as affecting the application of section 514 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.”

Page 56 of the Baucus bill is identical, said Shadegg. It reads: “(3) Nothing in this part shall be construed to affect or modify the provisions of section 514 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 with respect to group health plans.”

Shadegg said that Pelosi and Reid need to “tell America why the insurance industry is given immunity from accountability for its actions” in the House and Senate bills.

He further said that his amendment offered in the House Energy and Commerce Committee to strike the ERISA language from the House bill was ruled out of order by Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)
 
The Arizona congressman said he plans to continue his efforts to strike the language from the bill, even up to its debate in the House and Senate conference committee where a final bill would take shape.
 
“If the American people understood the deal that was made here, the fact that the insurance companies are granted the ability to go on hurting people and not be held liable for doing so,” Shadegg said. “As Harry Reid said, in one of these quotes we gave you, he said, ‘Nobody else in America is granted immunity except diplomats and insurance companies operating under ERISA.’”
 
Pelosi and Reid did not respond to requests by CNSNews.com for comments on the claims made by Republicans at the press conference.