One of the great mysteries of American politics is why Democrats won’t help fix medical-malpractice laws. It’s not totally a mystery, of course. Trial lawyers inject a lot of money into the Democratic cash stream, and they expect inaction in return.
But the Democrats are supposed to be the party of health care. The soaring costs of malpractice insurance are forcing doctors in high-risk specialties to quit. Obstetricians have stopped delivering babies. Emergency rooms are closing. Neurosurgeons are moving away to states with reforms in place.
Letting lawyers siphon mega-millions from the nation’s medical system is morally wrong and a total loser with the public. In a battle that pits family doctors against lawyers, do Democrats really want to side with the lawyers?
Nevertheless, Democrats voted in droves against a recent House bill that would limit malpractice awards. The measure was modeled on successful California reforms, which have contained malpractice insurance costs in that lawsuit-happy state. The legislation did pass, but is sure to die in the Senate.
The bill lets victims of malpractice collect for all lost wages and health-care costs. What irks the lawyers is a $250,000 limit on pain and suffering. That’s where the money is. You can’t really stick a dollar sign on such non-economic losses, so the sky’s the limit.
The game is to keep suing doctors until the lawyers hit the jackpot. In one famous case, a New York jury awarded $140 million last year to the family of a boy who had suffered permanent brain damage after surgery. Numbers like these keep the lawyers going. (They keep a third or more of the money.)
Democrats have taken to parading grief-stricken parents and young people in wheelchairs around Capitol Hill. Many have been genuinely hurt by incompetent doctors and deserve compensation.
But these sad spectacles have not distracted Americans from what’s really at stake. The public can distinguish between making people whole and making them tycoons – especially when the costs come out of a stressed medical system. It knows that most tragedies don’t necessarily draw mega-lottery-sized payments. When soldiers die in war, their families aren’t handed checks in the eight figures.
About 74 percent of Americans see malpractice-insurance costs as a “crisis” or “major problem,” according to a Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation survey. And 60 percent think malpractice lawsuits are a very important factor in rising health-care costs
The side for reform has dramatic stories, too. There are Doctors Jim and Tom Schwieterman, a pair of physician brothers belonging to a century-old family practice in Mercer County, Ohio. Like their father, grandfather and great-grandfather before them, they deliver babies. But escalating malpractice premiums have brought that tradition to an end. The brothers say that they could move 20 miles west to Indiana, where malpractice law was long ago reformed, and see their premiums drop by 75 percent.
If premiums continue to rise, 58 percent of the state’s doctors would close their practice in three years, according to an Ohio State Medical Association survey. (The state legislature passed caps on pain-and-suffering awards in 2000, but they are relatively high and being challenged in court.)
Ohio is a battleground state in the upcoming election. So it’s no coincidence that President Bush has been campaigning there and urging limits on malpractice awards. Does Democrat John Kerry want to show up with his meager reform – promising only to weed out frivolous suits? The problem is off-the-wall awards.
The crisis is also acute in Pennsylvania, where the state constitution prohibits caps on damages. Pennsylvania recently raised cigarette taxes to help pay part of the doctors’ premiums. But that just leaves taxpayers subsidizing outrageous awards for pain and suffering.
Medical-malpractice premiums are exploding in Washington state. Yet both of its U.S. senators voted “no” last February on a bill that would limit awards against obstetricians and gynecologists. One of them, Democrat Patty Murray, is up for re-election. She calls the caps a “political gimmick.” Her Republican opponent, Rep. George Nethercutt, rightly supports them.
One Democrat maintains a noble distance from her party’s craven stance on medical-liability reform: Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. That other Democrats choose to ignore the strong evidence in California and elsewhere that caps work boggles the mind.
The Democrats may think health care is their issue. But have they any idea how much their hostility to really fixing the medical-malpractice law hurts them?
Froma Harrop is a Providence Journal columnist. Contact her by writing to fharrop@projo.com.
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