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Wednesday, October 16, 1996 

                   Nader Urges Support for HMO Curbs 

Health care: Consumer activist attacks industry at Santa Monica news 
conference. 

                   By DAVID R. OLMOS, Times Staff Writer

Chastising HMOs for "excessive greed" and for interfering in the 
relationships between doctors and patients, consumer activist Ralph 
Nader on Tuesday said tough new state regulations are needed to keep the 
managed care industry in check. 
                         
Nader is backing Proposition 216, which is one of two
anti-HMO ballot measures on the Nov. 5 statewide ballot and
which is trailing in the polls. 

Supporters of the measure are hoping to gather some momentum by 
launching a series of radio and newspaper advertisements this week and 
TV ads featuring Nader within the next few weeks. 
                        
Proposition 216 and a similar but competing measure, Proposition 214, 
are being widely watched by health care experts and legislators across 
the nation as a measure of the public's attitudes toward managed care. 
The two measures share a number of similar provisions, such as requiring 
second opinions when medical treatments are denied by health maintenance 
organizations or related medical groups. But Proposition 216 proposes 
sterner regulations, such as "greed taxes" on health care mergers and on 
"excessive" compensation for health care executives. 
                        
 Opponents, however, say the measures would sharply raise medical costs 
and impose overregulation of the health care industry, and are 
union-backed efforts to protect jobs. 
                         
Speaking at a news conference in Santa Monica, Nader said the California 
measures have become "the main battleground in health care today" in the 
ongoing national debate over the growing influence of large managed care
companies over medicine. Nader, joined by a hospital nurse, attacked 
HMOs for "practicing medicine without a license." He contended that
doctors' decisions are being overridden by health plan administrators 
"who haven't even seen the patients." With them was a Simi Valley 
insurance broker who portrayed himself as an HMO victim whose wife died 
of cancer. 
                        
 A frequent complaint of physicians who work for HMOs is that their 
treatment decisions are sometimes overturned by managed care 
administrators who are only vaguely familiar with  the patient's history 
and medical problems. Supporters of managed care, however, say that such 
oversight is the very backbone of the industry's efforts to cut medical 
costs by reducing unnecessary medical treatments that may also be 
potentially harmful to patients. 
                         
Nader predicted that the issue of who is in charge of
 making medical decisions--doctors or managed care administrators--"will 
become a second battlefront in the debate over the growth of big 
hospital chains and HMOs." 
                        
Proposition 216's principal backers are the California Nurses Assn., a 
nurses' union that has been harshly critical of HMOs, and Consumers for 
Quality Care, a Nader-affiliated organization headed by Harvey 
Rosenfield, author of the Proposition 103 auto insurance reforms. 
                         

                   Copyright Los Angeles Times