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Special points of interest:
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MICRA Repeal Buried in California Ballot Initiative
It has withstood dozens of direct challenges over the years, but California’s MICRA faces a yet another attack as repeal of the law and its associated medical liability reforms is hidden deep into a California ballot initiative purportedly aimed at drug testing for physicians.
Widely popular, and with broad bipartisan support (apart from those who are affiliated with personal injury lawyers, that is), MICRA has kept medical liability premiums from skyrocketing and has preserved access to care for California patients since 1975.
An recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal details exactly what California patients stand to lose if the law is repealed – access to quality, low cost healthcare and a large number of available physicians across all medical specialties.
The piece contained information from a study by the Berkeley Research Group, estimating that raising the cap on damages to $1 million would increase liability premiums up to 38 percent, based on the experience of other states that have imposed or eliminated limits. California’s annual health costs would rise by $9.9 billion, or $1,000 for a family of four.
In agreement with the Wall Street Journal, the HCLA wrote that “MICRA has withstood decades of challenges by personal injury lawyers because it remains effective in protecting patient access to quality care and keeping health care costs in check. This is why MICRA has served as the model for medical liability reform throughout the nation.”
To read the WSJ editorial on how trial lawyers have made a tough pill easier to swallow by embedding the repeal of MICRA in an unrelated ballot question, click here.
Paging President Obama – Liability Laws in Need of Reform
As the Affordable Care Act reached its first milestone by reportedly adding over 8 million Americans into the ranks of the insured, the need for medical liability reforms looms large.
An Investor’s Business Daily piece earlier this month reminds readers that President Obama has acknowledged that the current system is costly and ineffective and that he remains open to reform. With little appetite by Democrats in Congress to make the move, however, options for comprehensive reforms have stalled.
Throughout his tenure, President Obama has stated his support for liability reforms (although not caps on damages) – first “looking at a range of ideas” to curtail costly medical malpractice lawsuits and “scale back the excessive defensive medicine,” – and came to an understanding “that defensive medicine may be contributing to unnecessary costs.”
Unfortunately, movements on the liability reform front have been few and far between. Promises for millions in research grants to study reforms went unfunded. Millions more for demonstration projects testing nontraditional reforms won’t see results until late next year.
Supporters of reform, including the HCLA and our Protect Patients Now, will continue to page President Obama and our elected officials, both in Washington and in state houses across the country until legislation is enacted that ends lawsuit abuse and finally puts patients first. To read the Investor’s Business Daily article, click here.
Liability Climate Remains Cold in New York
Recently acknowledging a doctor shortage in upstate and western New York, The Buffalo News cited poor weather and low temperatures as key factors in failing to attract new physicians – neglecting to include the state’s medical liability climate in their reasoning.
A letter to the editor in response to the article, from Thomas B. Stebbins, Executive Director of the Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York, wouldn’t let health care “experts” cited in the original article off so easily.
”The real reason that doctors are not choosing upstate New York is the astronomical cost of lawsuits and medical liability insurance,” Stebbins wrote. “New York’s medical liability payouts are the highest in the nation – more than three times the national average. Medical liability insurance in New York is so expensive that taxpayers now pay more than $120 million annually to subsidize premiums. For many doctors, avoiding New York is simply a sensible economic decision.”
It’s clear that it isn’t the New York winters freezing doctors out of the state, and it certainly isn’t the draw of a hot Texas summer bringing doctors down south. States with comprehensive medical liability reforms allow physicians to practice without fear of meritless lawsuits and astronomical liability premiums – truly improving the climate.
To read the letter to the editor in response to New York’s physician shortage, click here.
Liability Briefs
Senators John Thune (R-S.D.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced a bipartisan bill this month to clarify that physicians and other sports medicine professionals who travel with a sports team outside their primary licensed state and provide care for the team’s athletes will be covered by their medical liability insurance. The bill will eliminate ambiguity about medical liability coverage when a provider is technically practicing out-of-state while treating a patient-althlete from the provider’s home state. They join Rep. Tom Latham (R-Iowa), who introduced a similar bill in December.
Click here for a joint press release from Senators Thune and Klobuchar on the need to protect student and professional athletes and their providers, and here for the full text of the bill.
The American College of Physicians made liability reform a key focus of their annual internal medicine meeting, holding a discussion of the issue in their press briefing and simultaneously releasing a policy paper (found here) that emphasizes traditional liability reforms (and more specifically, reasonable limits on non-economic damages) in bringing down costs, while also understanding that new approaches are needed to reform a longstanding crisis.
“Remedies need to be multifaceted,” ACP President Molly Cooke, MD said. “No single program or law by itself will likely achieve the goals of improving patient safety; ensuring fair compensation to the patients when they are harmed by a medical error or negligence; strengthening the patient-physician relationship; and reducing the economic costs associated with the current system.”
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