Bush Calls For Med Liability Reform

Washington Bureau

President Bush, speaking to an agent gathering last week, called on the Senate to pass a bill revising the framework for medical injury litigation that would provide a national solution to junk lawsuits.

The president spoke, along with Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., at the National Legislative Conference of the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America.

“When I first got to Washington, I thought medical liability reform would best be handled at the state level until I realized what the cost of the defensive practice of medicine, the cost of settling lawsuits, and the rising costs of premiums do to the federal budget,” President Bush said.

We pay for Medicare. We pay for Medicaid. We pay for veterans' health benefits. All of those costs are affected by junk lawsuits, he said.

Medical liability reform is a national problem that requires a national solution, and now is the time for the United States Senate to listen to doctors and patients and concerned citizensand not the powerful trial lawyers lobbyand get me a medical liability bill.”

Sen. McConnell put the blame for the lack of movement on tort reform at the feet of the trial bar and Senate Democrats.

“We have had an extraordinarily difficult time reaching the 60-vote threshold for any type of litigation reform,” he said.

With the passage of the class action reform bill, though, he said the majority is ready to try again to reform the medical liability system.

He noted, however, that Senate Democrats had successfully killed prior measures that took a broad-based approach, as well as those that were more narrowly focused on obstetrics or emergency rooms. “We need Democratswilling to stand up to the plaintiffs' bar,” he said. “Everything the plaintiffs' bar wants, it is not necessary to give them.”

Reproduced from National Underwriter Edition, April 15, 2005. Copyright 2005 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.