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The Proposed Patients' Bill Of Rights: The Case Of The Missing Equal Protection Clause, Dean Hashimoto

Dean M. Hashimoto

Congress is considering passing a patients' bill of rights. The proposed reform provides for appeals of disagreements between managed care organizations and patients over treatment decisions and also ensures access to specialists and emergency rooms. These reforms place a heavy emphasis on regulating managed care groups by assigning due process rights to patients of privately funded health plans. This article offers a vision of an alternative reform based on principles of both equality and due process. Empirical research demonstrates that although managed care systems appear to provide roughly adequate health care for the general public, they may not be providing …