For Immediate Release
March 27, 2001
Steve Levine
phone: (512) 370-1380
cell: (512) 750-0971
e-mail: Steve Levine
Texas Medical Association, the country's largest state medical society, today announced it is joining class action lawsuits that allege serious violations of federal antiracketeering laws by two of the state's largest for-profit health plans.
TMA's suit alleges that Humana and CIGNA have purposefully enriched themselves as part of a scheme to defraud physicians and their patients. TMA is joining its sister medical societies in California and Georgia, as well as the Denton County Medical Society and 20 individual physicians in California, Alabama, Colorado, Kentucky, Florida, Georgia, and Texas in consolidated suits whose defendants include Humana, CIGNA, Aetna, Wellpoint, Foundation, and PacifiCare.
"Physicians from coast to coast are standing up to these investor-driven managed care giants and saying, 'Stop. You're spoiling our profession. You're hurting our patients. You're destroying the physician-patient relationship. Our duty lies in what's best for our patients, not in what's best for the insurance companies' bottom line,' " TMA President Dr. Jim Rohack said at a news conference in the History of Medicine gallery at TMA's Austin headquarters building.
Dr. Rohack stressed that the 37,000-member professional association entered the legal action reluctantly, after more than a decade of helping to draft strong patient protection laws in Texas, working with state and federal regulatory agencies, and lobbying for a comprehensive federal Patients' Bill of Rights.
"We are backed into a corner," he said. "This is our Alamo. This is our last chance to halt these HMOs' predatory and destructive business practices that cannot be remedied through the well-worn paths to the Legislature, the Congress, and the regulatory agencies."
The lawsuits, currently consolidated under a U.S. district judge in Miami, seek an injunction that will compel the health plans to comply with all state and federal laws.
"We want these plans to stop the practice of putting profits first," Dr. Rohack said. "The association is seeking only injunctive relief from this industry, we just want it to stop shaking down the physicians who have earned an honest fee. We want this industry to stop hiding among a confusing and contradictory morass of state and federal laws. We want it to stop extorting us to do its dirty work."
The TMA president emphasized that the goal of the lawsuits is not to destroy HMOs, but rather to force the plans to manage care as well as costs, and to help rather than hinder physicians' efforts to provide high-quality curative and preventive medical care to their patients.
"We're looking for a few good plans," he said. "We want managed care to be all that it can be."
Archie Lamb of Birmingham, Alabama, co-lead counsel in the case, said he was very pleased that TMA and the Medical Association of Georgia had joined the other plaintiffs today.
"We have today filed our complaint in conformity with the court's order," Mr. Lamb said. "We welcome as additional plaintiffs several individual physicians and two more of the nation's most-influential medical association. Their presence in this lawsuit is a resounding reaffirmation of medicine's resolve in this matter.
Texas Medical Association is a professional organization of nearly 37,000 physician and medical student members. It is located in Austin and has 118 component county medical societies around the state. The Association represents 85 percent of the doctors of medicine licensed and residing in Texas. TMA's key objective is to improve the health of all Texans.
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EDITORS: The following related materials are available on the TMA Web site at www.texmed.org: