January 17, 2003 -- Bush pushes for malpractice caps


The crisis in health care cost to employers has led to a concerted
corporate/government to cover the uninsured, mostly workers with jobs, using
private insurance to provide a standardized stripped-down "basic" health
plan. Later, employers will then try to force the workers they do cover
onto this same "basic" plan. But because more injuries and deaths will
result, they need to limit malpractice awards, particularly punitive rewards
designed to change hospital practices. This is why they relate malpractice
"reform" with increasing access.



New York Times, January 17, 2003

President Renews Drive for a Limit on Malpractice Awards

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

SCRANTON, Pa., Jan. 16 - Saying rapid increases in malpractice premiums are
driving doctors out of some states and pushing up the cost of health care,
President Bush said today that a big part of the solution was to curb what
he called frivolous suits and put a $250,000 limit on pain and suffering
awards by juries in cases that go to trial.

Mr. Bush called on Congress to enact national limits on the dollar amounts
of jury awards in medical malpractice cases. His stance brought immediate
condemnation from some Democrats, plaintiffs' lawyers and liberal interest
groups. They said Mr. Bush was standing up for the interests of doctors and
insurers at the expense of patients who receive shoddy care or worse.

He cast his initiative in distinctly populist terms, saying the price of
litigious ness was borne by average people like pregnant women who could not
find obstetricians and poor people whose doctors closed shop.

"Excessive jury awards will continue to drive up insurance costs, will put
good doctors out of business or run them out of your community, and will
hurt communities like Scranton, Pa.," Mr. Bush said in a speech at the
University of Scranton.

He also called for other steps, including limiting how long patients would
have to sue their doctors, limiting punitive damages, requiring that any
judgments be paid over time rather than in a lump sum and cutting the
amounts that doctors must pay if plaintiffs have received other payments
from insurers to compensate them for their losses.

Mr. Bush's push to clamp down on suits dates from his time as governor of
Texas, and the details of his proposal today were the same as those in
legislation that passed the House last year before dying in the Senate.

In raising the issue now, he set up a battle with a number of potential
Democratic rivals for the presidency next year, most notably Senator John
Edwards of North Carolina, a former trial lawyer.

In raising the issue here in Pennsylvania, Mr. Bush again signaled his
intention to fight hard to pull the state, which he lost to Al Gore in 2000,
into his column. It was the 18th trip of his presidency to Pennsylvania,
according to The Associated Press, and the second in five weeks.

Mr. Edwards said malpractice premiums were going up largely because
insurance companies had lost money in the stock market and were passing
along the costs to doctors and patients. Mr. Edwards agreed on a crackdown
on frivolous suits but said limiting jury awards for noneconomic damages
would not solve the malpractice problem.

Aides to Mr. Edwards said Mr. Bush's strategy would backfire.

"They're making a huge mistake if they think regular Americans are going to
take the side of the insurance companies as opposed to the side of victims
who have been badly hurt and are looking for someone to fight for them in
court," said Jonathan Prince, an adviser to Mr. Edwards.

Gov.-elect Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania, a Democrat, said at a news
conference here after the president's speech that jury awards were just a
small part of the problem and that the best thing the federal government
could do to help doctors would be to increase their payments under Medicare.

Plaintiffs' lawyers said Mr. Bush's plan would do little to lower
malpractice premiums and would make it difficult for patients to pursue
legitimate claims.

A lawyer in Kingston, Joseph A. Quinn Jr., said he had just agreed to a $7
million malpractice settlement with the parent company of a hospital that
Mr. Bush visited today, Mercy Hospital of Scranton. The case involved Frank
Thornton, 73, who suffered irreversible brain damage when doctors at Mercy
Hospital of Wilkes-Barre inserted a ventilator tube in his esophagus rather
than his trachea.

The Mercy chain said on Monday that the suit had been a "legitimate and
sincere" effort by Mr. Thornton's family to learn what had happened to him.

Mr. Quinn said the case showed that there were many outrageous malpractice
cases that deserved to be tried and many plaintiffs with legitimate
compensation claims. But with a $250,000 limit on noneconomic damages, he
added, many lawyers and their clients would have little hope of recouping
what they spent on their cases.

"If you impose caps," Mr. Quinn said, "lawyers cannot afford to pursue these
cases and patients cannot afford to hire lawyers to help them."

Mr. Bush likened filing malpractice suits to a lottery.

"And with the plaintiffs' bar getting as much as 40 percent of any verdict,"
he said, "sometimes there's only one winner in the lottery."