Since Mississippi passed lawsuit abuse reform in 2004, including caps on medical malpractice awards, the Magnolia State has seen the number of such claims decline 91 percent. The state’s largest medical malpractice insurer dropped its premiums by 42 percent, and it has offered an additional 20 percent rebate to doctors and hospitals of the premiums they pay each year.
Following his recent address to a joint session of Congress, President Obama announced plans to implement token “demonstration projects” on lawsuit abuse, but he’s still not willing to address the issue meaningfully in health care reform legislation. Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, has a message for him: “If they want a demonstration project, come down to Mississippi. I’ll show you a demonstration project.”
As Barbour puts it, medical malpractice reform is the “lowest-hanging fruit” in the debate over spiraling medical costs. Such reform cannot solve all of the complex problems in our health care system, but it will reduce the drag that high health care costs are having on our economy — a major goal of the president’s reform effort. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimated in 2003 that unreasonable medical malpractice jury awards add as much as $126 billion to Americans’ health care costs each year.
Unfortunately, Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., are wholly owned by the trial lawyer lobby, so they will bypass this low-hanging fruit without giving it a second thought. They will thus miss a simple, proven reform in favor of implementing a government-run health care system that is certain to cause health care costs to skyrocket while the quality of health care plummets.
Trial lawyers argue that limits on non-economic damages deprive aggrieved patients of their right to sue. But the experience in California, where such limits have been in place since 1975, does not bear this out. Legitimately harmed patients still sue and win reasonable awards. And hordes of trial lawyers are still gainfully employed there.
Obama entered this debate promising to fight “well-financed foes” who “profit from the status quo.” Yet, he has cultivated every special interest that stands to profit from health care “reform.” The big drugmakers and insurers have spent tens of millions promoting his plan. He stands ready to ditch the “public option,” the only provision that the insurers oppose. And he won’t take on the trial lawyers, despite the proven benefits and low cost of medical malpractice lawsuit abuse reform.
