By Warren Vieth -
COLLINSVILLE, Ill. — President Bush today demanded congressional action this year to rein in what he called "junk" lawsuits against doctors and hospitals, saying the time had come to impose federal restraints on a system traditionally left to the states.
Taking his tort reform campaign to a southern Illinois county known as a hotbed of civil litigation, Bush said the prospect of big jury awards in medical malpractice cases was causing insurance rates to soar and doctors to abandon their practices.
"What's happening all across this country is that lawyers are filing baseless suits against hospitals and doctors.…They know the medical liability system is tilted in their favor," Bush told a group of medical professionals and business allies.
"Medical liability reform is a national issue, and it requires a national solution," he said.
Bush's broadside was the opening round in a legislative battle involving some of the nation's most powerful and well-financed interest groups. Doctors, hospitals, drug makers and other manufacturers who want to limit litigation expenses are lining up against the trial attorneys who represent plaintiffs in personal injury cases.
Bush prodded lawmakers to take action this year to address three facets of what he presents as a litigation crisis that the White House estimates is costing the U.S. economy more than $230 billion a year. The bills sought by Bush would limit damages in malpractice cases, restrict class-action lawsuits and curb asbestos-related litigation.
White House officials said the president wanted the new Congress to tackle the malpractice legislation before taking up other top domestic policy priorities such as Social Security restructuring and tax simplification. The House is expected to heed his call, but he faces uncertain odds in the Senate, where many members are attorneys and where Republicans lack the votes to cut off filibusters.
The malpractice legislation Bush favors would not limit the size of damage awards for medical treatment and lost wages. It would, however, place a $250,000 ceiling on awards for pain and suffering and other noneconomic damages.
A number of states, including California, have enacted such caps. The U.S. House has voted several times to impose a $250,000 federal damage cap; the measures have stalled in the Senate.
The president and his allies say the prospect of multimillion-dollar judgments is driving the complaints about the malpractice insurance system. Opponents say caps disproportionately affect children, seniors and stay-at-home mothers who have little or no lost wages on which to base a malpractice award.
"The value of a life should not be equal to the value of a paycheck," said a full-page newspaper advertisement welcoming the president to southern Illinois, but urging him to reverse course on damage caps. The ad was purchased by an advocacy group allied with trial lawyers.
Bush deliberately chose to launch his medical liability campaign in Madison County, Ill. Madison and adjacent St. Clair County have been ranked by tort reform advocates as the two worst places in the nation in which to be sued, based on the number of lawsuits filed in recent years and a history of pro-plaintiff rulings by judges who received campaign contributions from trial attorneys.
The medical liability system is "out of control," Bush said. "And you people in this area and the doctors in this area understand what I'm talking about."
Nationwide, the high cost of malpractice liability caused nearly half of all hospitals to lose doctors or reduce services, Bush said. In Madison and St. Clair counties, 160 physicians have retired or relocated over the past two years, he said.
"Junk lawsuits change the way docs do their jobs," Bush said. "Instead of trying to heal the patients, doctors try not to get sued."
Before his address, Bush met privately with two physicians, a hospital administrator and a patient who have been negatively affected by the rising cost of malpractice insurance. Neurosurgeon Chris Heffner of Belleview stopped performing brain surgery after his insurance premiums rose to $264,000 a year, the White House said. Bob Moore shut down the obstetrics unit at Red Bud Regional Hospital after its premiums doubled to $270,000.
The president and his allies argue that the threat of big jury awards is a principal cause of the escalating malpractice insurance rates that have caused some physicians to quit their practices or to move. The problem is particularly acute in such high-risk specialties as obstetrics, they say.
But trial attorneys contend that other factors are contributing to high insurance rates, including lax regulation of insurance carriers in Illinois and other states. They point to statistics suggesting that the number of big malpractice awards is relatively small, even in such high-profile jurisdictions as Madison County.
Over a seven-year period ending in 2003, only six jury verdicts were rendered against defendants in malpractice and wrongful death cases in Madison and St. Clair counties, and only one was large enough to be affected by the proposed $250,000 limit on non-economic damages, according to court records cited by trial attorneys.
To counter the White House spotlight on distressed doctors and abandoned patients, opponents of liability limits are offering up their anecdotal examples in the form of malpractice victims and their families.
One of them is Donna Harnett of Chicago, whose 8-year-old son Martin was born with severe mental and physical disabilities after a difficult delivery in a Cook County hospital. Harnett sued the hospital, alleging that she was allowed to remain in labor for several hours despite signs of fetal distress and that an emergency Caesarian section was delayed longer than necessary.
Harnett won a substantial settlement, which she said she cannot discuss because she signed a confidentiality agreement. But she resents the notion that compensation for the pain and suffering experienced by her son, who is a quadriplegic and must be fed through a tube, would be limited to $250,000 under Bush's proposal.
"If you could just see what my son goes through, all of the operations, the way he sits and watches and knows that he is different, the suffering he goes through every day," Harnett said. "I would like to see who would have the nerve to say this is worth only $250,000. His life was stolen from him the moment it should have begun."
The American Trial Lawyers Assn. challenged the accuracy of Bush's facts and figures, citing statistics showing no loss of physicians in Madison County, the state of Illinois or the nation as a whole.
The group said malpractice costs represented less than 2% of overall healthcare spending.
Source: L.A. Times
