If the current patients’ bill of rights is signed into law, it may not have much of an effect on Iowa residents.

The bill, which was passed in the Senate Friday with a 59-36 vote, would allow workers to sue their HMOs for negligence for denying health care.

The bill moves to the House next week, after Congress’ Fourth of July recess.

Ed Twedt, of Twedt Insurance Agency, said even if President George W. Bush, who threatened a veto Friday, signs the bill, it will not change the way health care works in Iowa.

“It really doesn’t apply to people in Iowa because Iowa is not a big HMO state,” he said.

Twedt said the majority of health insurers in the area use preferred provider organizations (PPO) instead of HMOs.

According to the Blue Cross Blue Shield Web site, www.bcbs.com, a PPO is a health care benefit arrangement designed to supply services at a discounted cost by providing incentives for members to use designated health care providers (who contract with the PPO at a discount), and by also providing coverage for services rendered by health care providers who are not part of the PPO network.

The difference between an HMO and a PPO is if the specified provider is not used, the HMO will not pay for it. A person also has more choices with a PPO.

Twedt said large corporations usually use HMOs, but most people in this area are employed by smaller businesses.

“Unless you are in an HMO you will not really be affected by the bill,” he said.

Steffen Schmidt, university professor of political science, said the real issue is not just about being able to sue an HMO.

He said this bill will change the government’s involvement with health care altogether.

“This discussion of suing HMOs is just a small part of the big picture of how we provide health care in the United States,” Schmidt said.

“The discussion has been about effects of allowing people to sue their HMO and the overall effect of health care.”

Schmidt said people could not previously sue HMOs because their services were designed to lower insurance rates and the cost of health care, so they were completely protected in order to keep prices low.

“Critics say if you can sue your health care provider a lot of these people are not going to provide health care,” he said.

Schmidt said the argument for the patients’ bill of rights is people need a way to react to HMOs if services are denied.

“Proponents of the bill say it is necessary for people to have some sort of recourse when they get sick or have an emergency and are denied service,” he said.

He said the debate over a patients’ bill of rights is part of a continuing trend of bigger issues now becoming partisan.

“It is part of the discussion of how much the market should provide things or how much the government should be involved,” Schmidt said.

He said Democrats are typically in favor of more government, whereas Republicans would rather let the market determine the outcome.

“We have had a lot of difficulty in the U.S. on how to provide health care, how much health care to provide Americans and at what cost to provide health care,” he said.

Schmidt said as technology has increased it has become more difficult to provide health care for everyone.

“Today, health care is almost an unlimited expense. In the past, it didn’t matter because there weren’t a whole lot of things that could be done and they were cheap, but today we cannot afford to give everyone the best available health care,” Schmidt said.

Sen. Johnnie Hammond, D-Ames, said a federal patients’ bill of rights will have a positive effect on Iowa and the rest of the nation.

“I support the right to sue. I don’t think there should be any industry or organization [free from accountability],” Hammond said.

Rep. Barbara Finch, R-Ames, said she supports the patients’ bill of rights because people deserve the coverage they pay for.

“People have certain guarantees when they pay for health care and with the patients’ bill of rights it will be met,” she said.