Week In Review A Look Back At The Top Stories From The Last Week

NATION

Patient bill of rights

Responding to a stream of HMO horror stories, the House approved bipartisan legislation Thursday granting new rights to patients, including the right to sue their health insurance companies for denying care.

The 275-151 vote marked a striking triumph for congressional Democrats and the White House, overcoming last-ditch efforts by GOP leaders to water down the right-to-sue provisions.

The measure would guarantee access to reasonable emergency room care, give patients the right to see pediatricians and obstetricians without permission from primary care doctors and require routine care associated with clinical trials. Patients who were denied care would be able to sue in state courts after seeking redress in an external review process. There would be no limit on the amount of damages that could be recovered so long as the patient adhered to the decision made by the outside appeals panel.

The bill must now be reconciled with the Senate version, which covers far fewer people and is weaker on almost every provision.

Pound of cure

A study of more than 1 million Americans provides the most convincing evidence yet that simply being overweight can cut your life short.

The study, the largest ever done on obesity and mortality, found that overweight people run a higher rate of premature death. And this was true even among people who didn’t smoke and were otherwise healthy during their middle years.

The research, conducted by the American Cancer Society and published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, settles once and for all any lingering questions about whether weight alone increases the risk of death and disease, said Dr. JoAnn Manson, a Harvard University endocrinologist and preventive-health specialist. “The evidence is now compelling and irrefutable.”

WORLD

Rail disaster

A London commuter train that may have failed to stop for a red warning signal collided nearly head-on with a high-speed express at the height of the morning rush hour Tuesday, killing at least 33 people and renewing questions about rail safety on Britain’s privatized railroads.

More than 150 were injured in the crash, which came amid a government campaign encouraging more motorists to take trains. Police said the death toll could more than double when all victims had been recovered from the wreckage.

The crash, the worst rail disaster in Britain in 11 years, occurred on the same stretch of track where seven were killed and 150 injured two years ago in the last major train accident in Britain. One of the trains involved in Tuesday’s crash was operated by Great Western Trains, which was fined $2.5 million for negligence in the 1997 crash in the town of Southall.

REGION

Enough’s enough

Spokane County Sheriff Mark Sterk has had it with the Kaiser Aluminum lockout of union workers and said so Monday.

The sheriff urged Kaiser to allow the 2,100 Spokane Steelworkers to return to work before a contract settlement is reached, a proposition Kaiser officials immediately declined.

“The lockout is stretching our law enforcement resources,” Sterk wrote in a letter to the media made public Monday. “We cannot afford to continue as we are. The dispute at times threatens the public safety in our community.”

Also on Monday, Kaiser and union officials announced that lead negotiators will meet Thursday and Friday in Chicago to discuss a framework for negotiations.

Bone of contention

The region’s largest health insurance company has lost its “preferred provider” contracts with nearly three-quarters of Spokane’s orthopedic surgeons, who say they can no longer afford to see patients because of expensive bureaucratic snarls and low reimbursement rates. Several general surgeons and Inland Imaging, a radiology clinic, say they will soon drop their agreements with MSC/Premera Blue Cross as well, meaning some 95,000 people covered by MSC/Premera will pay more of the cost of medical care.

MSC/Premera says it hopes to resolve the dispute soon.