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Early Senate Health Care Buzz Gives Patient Safety Fans Reason to be Thankful

By Andy Hoffman

Here at ThePopTort, we love holidays?especially Thanksgiving, which in addition to delicious food, means expressing gratitude for cool and virtuous things?like optimism.  So you can imagine how tickled we were to find a couple of news items suggesting fans of patient rights and safety might have reason to be optimistic as we look ahead to the U.S. Senate?s debate on amending its version of the health care bill.

For starters, Cathleen Crowley of Hearst/Dead by Mistake fame which recently noted that patient safety was nowhere to be found in the health care bill, wrote a wonderful piece on Sunday, praising U.S. Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA) and his ?Who will speak for the patients?" speech on the House floor, standing up to a bunch of rude and nasty members of Congress. 

Meanwhile, Politico?s Mike Allen recently reported that President Obama made a blog post by Atlantic Media?s Ron Brownstein ?required reading? for senior White House staff.  (?Rahm Emanuel assigned it, telling staffers ?not to come back to the next day's meeting? if they hadn't read it, according to an administration official.?)  Notably, the piece says that medical malpractice limits are being pushed only by those who oppose the health care bill.  Says Brownstein, ?And since virtually, if not literally, none of them plan to support the final health care bill under any circumstances, the package isn't likely to reflect much of their thinking.? 

Here?s hoping, anyway.  Happy Thanksgiving from ThePopTort!

Full post as published by ThePopTort on November 25, 2009 (boomark / email).