Legislation should Target solving the problem of medical malpractice, not limiting the rights of the injured.
The several hundred page Healthcare Bill that the House recently passed considered, and ultimately did not include, a piece of right-wing consolation in the form of caps on damages in medical malpractice cases. As a lawyer who has dedicated his professional career to helping those harmed by medical negligence, I feel strongly that the proposed solution does not address the root of the problem – the hundreds of thousands of people who are adversely affected each year as a result of medical negligence. Rather, restricting the legal rights of injured patient’s only gives physicians less incentive to avoid negligently injuring other patients.
Joanna Doroshow discusses the medical malpractice component of the health care bill in her recent article, stating, “to proponents of legislation like this, dealing with malpractice is never actually about solving the problem of malpractice. Medical negligence kills at least a hundred thousand people every year and injures ten times more, costing the economy tens of billions of dollars annually. What they mean is weakening the legal rights of patients, lessening the accountability of incompetent doctors and unsafe hospitals, and giving more money to the insurance industry” (Huffington Post).
The bill functions to protect “medical and insurance companies [by] preventing juries from awarding [the injured] too much money for malpractice.” However, those who think this will fix the problem of rising health care costs will soon be eating their words, as reduction in medical malpractice damages “will cap those malpractice costs… which the Congressional Budget Office just found out contribute to the rising cost of care to the tune of merely one-half of one percent." On the contrary, other studies have shown that the costs of health care can be attributed, at least in large part, to the insurance companies who are protected by this very bill. Insurance companies advocate for damage capping legislation with little or no intent to proportionately decrease medical malpractice insurance premiums that they charge to doctors.
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