A few weeks ago, we warned you that Congress might become distracted by lobbyists seeking to shield negligent doctors and hospitals from accountability. Today, at least 23 amendments to the health care bill would do just that, weakening our right to hold negligent providers accountable when they cause severe permanent injuries or death.
In fact, the woefully inadequate health care bill introduced by Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) already endorses money for experiments with substitutes for the civil justice system.
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| Tell Congress: Don’t shield negligent medical providers. Support simple reforms that would save lives and money. |
The Senate Finance Committee begins voting on amendments to the health care bill TODAY. Please contact your senators now and tell them to say no to health industry lobbyists!
Medical malpractice is at epidemic levels in this country. The National Institute of Medicine estimated in 1999 that up to 98,000 people die every year in America’s hospitals from medical errors. Congress should focus on improving patient safety and reducing deaths and injuries with simple reforms, such as those suggested in Public Citizen’s recent report.
Letting negligent doctors and hospitals off the hook would do the opposite. It would leave us all exposed to medical negligence and stick us with the bill when people are hurt.
Tell your members of Congress: Improve patient safety and save lives. Oppose any amendments that would limit access to court for severely injured patients and their families.
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Any health care bill (and we do need reform) should include ALL facets of change – and that includes tort reform. Healthcare is regulated. Trial lawyers are not. And maybe we can start quoting something other than the 10-year old IOM report. Yes, there is malpractice and those guilty of TRUE malpractice should be held accountable. However, medicine is not exact science, though trial laywers will have the public believe it is. Not every error made in medicine is malpractice.
Thank you for your comment. Unfortunately, tort reform doesn’t address the two key issues of health care reform: cutting unnecessary costs and providing health care for Americans. The well-established fact is that malpractice litigation takes up a miniscule amount of overall health care spending. On the other hand, medical errors continue to be a significant problem that can and should be addressed in health care reform.
A 2009 Health Grades survey, http://www.healthgrades.com/media/DMS/pdf/Americas50BestHospitalsReport2009.pdf, confirms that there has been little improvement in patient safety. The Hearst newspapers also documented this crisis in their series, http://www.chron.com/deadbymistake/. A recent Public Citizen report, http://www.citizen.org/documents/BackToBasics.pdf, identifies a number of areas where basic patient safety practices can be implemented to improve patient safety. It makes little sense to limit patients’ access to the courts (a fundamental right recognized by this country’s founders) and let negligent wrongdoers off the hook. Perhaps, the one industry that should receive more scrutiny in this health care debate is the insurance industry – insurance companies’ high administrative costs and questionable decision making, when they refuse to cover health care costs for even those that are insured, are a main source of the problem.
As a side note, the legal profession is probably one of the most regulated in this country. Generally, states keep very close tabs on lawyers and their activities, including strict rules on ethics (such as conflict of interest), the way they manage their client accounts, and even on their advertising.