WASHINGTON – House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats spent two weeks denouncing private insurance plans, then used procedural rules to bail some of them out when the going got tough on Friday morning.

At issue was the legal status of insurance plans operated directly by employers and unions. “Don’t be shocked when you get home this August and are asked why you extended immunity to plans, including union plans, that injure or kill people,” cautioned U.S. Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz.

If an employee is killed or hurt because of a decision by a plan administrator, even if the decision involves willful negligence, the plan is immune from lawsuits, he said. “That employee can recover nothing for their injuries; nothing, even if there’s a wrongful death.”

“This bill not only doesn’t fix this problem, it preserves and extends it,” the congressman said. 

Shadegg told the story of a pregnant woman who was ordered hospitalized by a doctor who warned that if she was not treated in a hospital, either she or her baby would die. He said the insurance plan refused to pay for more than home nursing care, however, and when she went into labor, the baby perished. He said the insurer hired an expert to review the case and was told that the doctor’s prediction had been accurate. Still, he said, the plan escaped censure because it was legally immune.

U.S. Rep. Mike Burgess, R-Texas, noted that “there is an exemption that allows some people to go to the courthouse and recover damages: specifically, members of Congress.”

No vote occurred on the Shadegg amendment, however, because Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., ruled it out of order as “not germane to the bill.”