Need for Tort Reforms

Tort Reforms have been an important part of the Bush agenda. According to President Bush, the Congress needs to protect America’s patients, doctors, and hospitals from the staggering costs of out-of-control lawsuits by passing important medical liability reforms. He has pointed out that most of the doctors have abandoned Pennsylvania because of the high cost of medical insurance. This is mainly due to the unnecessary law suits.
The cost of malpractice insurance threatens the very survival of adequate medical care. Medical malpractice insurance premiums are substantially higher in certain states like West Virginia than they are in other surrounding states. For some specialists, the premiums in these regions are more than double what the premiums are for the same coverage in the neighboring states. The result is doctors leaving that region in search of greener pastures. Medical students and residents being trained in medical schools of areas with higher premiums are becoming more likely to leave those regions to start their professional careers in other states.
In such circumstances, Tort Reforms are needed to stop lawsuit abuse and assist the medical community. The republicans believe that to solve the problem of exorbitant malpractice insurance premiums, regions such as West Virginia must enact significant tort reform. The lawsuits have taken a heavy toll, and unless something is done in this regard, they will continue to do so.
There is a need to curtail frivolous lawsuits against doctors and hospitals in order to bring balance and reason into the resolution of medical malpractice claims. Texas for Lawsuit Reforms, an organization started by Mr. Dick Weekley, is aimed to help such regions to bring about balance. TLR’s objective is to restore litigation to its traditional and appropriate role in our society.

Not yet rated.
Gothanonymous Reader's picture



Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
Michael Bouldin's picture

Ugh.

In jurisdictions that have passed "tort reform", such as Texas, there has been no decrease in insurance costs. What this so-called "citizens movement" amounts to is this: a brigade of useful idiots for the insurance industry, which doesn't like lawsuits from proles cutting into their bottom line, but does like to charge ever-increasing premiums.

Not only are socially significant lawsuits like malpractice and product liability a small fraction of the legal picture but numerous studies show that capping damages doesn’t affect insuance premiums. One survey examined insurance rates between 1985 and 1998, then ranked the states according to the severity of their restrictions on lawsuits. Increased severity did not produce lower rates. In Texas, where malpractice filings dropped 20 percent in the nine years before Proposition 12, the liability picture has been little improved by its passage. About a third of doctors will see a decrease of 12 percent—after cumulative increases of 147 percent. The rest will either get no relief or double-digit increases.

According to J. Robert Hunter, Federal Insurance Administrator under Presidents Ford and Carter, caps don’t work because liability rates reflect not litigation costs but the insurance industry’s own practices. During good times, insurers write policies even for the worst risks to generate cash for investment. When the stock market tanks, rates climb steeply to cover losses. The current liability crisis, Hunter notes, coincided with the market downturn that began in the summer of 2001. And since the insurance cycle is international, the “hard market” also drove up premiums in Canada, Australia and France. “And those countries have totally different legal systems,” Hunter says.

In short, everything this author writes here is a lie.

Not yet rated.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Upcoming events

  • No upcoming events available

In keeping with the "city that never sleeps" tradition, keep up to date with our daily syndication digest.



Powered by FeedBlitz

The Publisher
Liza Sabater

Fresh dissent served daily
culturekitchen

Grassroots News and
Activism for New Yorkers

Daily Gotham

Feminist Bloggers Network
BlogSheroes

A new kind of voyeurism
Voogling

Art + Code + Philosophy
Potatoland.blog

Got any dirt, tips, leads or money for us? Then drop us a line or two at editors [at] dailygotham [dot] com or use our general contact form to reach everybody in the editorial team ASAP.

User login