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Special points of interest:
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Medical Liability Reform As Campaign Issue
 Health care has emerged as the number one domestic policy issue on the minds of presidential candidates of both parties. On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards have all proposed major overhauls of our health care system. The health care reform plan championed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts went into effect July 1 and is getting extensive scrutiny.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani, as part of his broader heath care initiative, has decided to take personal injury lawyers head on. In a speech in Council Bluffs, Iowa on July 18, Giuliani condemned the “trial lawyer tax on our economy” that “costs over $9,000 for a family of four.”
“They’re allowed to abuse the system,” the one-time Mayor of New York City said, promising that if he’s elected he’ll institute a loser pays rule and limit both non-economic damages and legal fees.
Additionally, in a speech earlier this month in Cleveland, President Bush once again called on Congress to protect patients and pass medical liability reform. “It makes no sense to have a legal system that punishes good medicine,” he told the Greater Cleveland Partnership. The current system is “driving up the costs of medicine…and driving good doctors out of practice.”
Protect Patients Now is working to ensure that medical liability reform gains a lot more traction as the campaign gets into high gear – so stay tuned, and we’ll keep you informed.
The Media is Catching On
You heard it here first, but it now seems that the Texas Miracle has become too big a story to ignore. A July 10 Associated Press article, entitled “Doctors flock to state…Limits on lawsuits draw professionals from across nation,” was picked up by some 82 outlets within the first week,  including The Washington Post, Newsday, FOX News, CBS News, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Denver Post, Miami Herald, plus the online versions of the New York Times, Philadelphia Daily News, San José Mercury News and Forbes magazine. Apparently, news outlets in Canada and Australia have also covered the story.
“An influx of doctors lured to Texas by new limits on malpractice lawsuits has overwhelmed the state board,” says the article. “Many of the relocating physicians are filling shortages in areas such as Beaumont, where trauma patients previously had to be flown to other cities because there weren’t enough surgeons to treat them.”
This is certainly good news for patients in Texas. Protect Patients Now is working hard to ensure all patients across the country have access to quality medical care when they need it.
Read more about it in the Associated Press article here.
Leading Think Tank Hosts Medical Liability Summit
 The American Enterprise Institute, a leading Washington, D.C. think tank, recently invited scholars to share their latest work on medical liability, resulting in a resounding affirmation from our academic friends of the efficacy of placing reasonable limits on non-economic damages.
Meredith Kilgore of the University of Alabama compared various medical liability reform measures and found that placing reasonable limits on non-economic damages was particularly effective, reducing medical liability premiums by 17.3 percent to 25.5 percent. David Hyman of the University of Illinois College of Law found that 43 percent to 50 percent of all expenses are eaten up by legal fees – an enormously unfair way to resolve grievances, unless you happen to be a personal injury lawyer. Randall Bovbjert of the Urban Institute cast withering skepticism on the contention of personal injury lawyers that the current legal system actually improves safety, pointing out that there is scarce data to support such a claim.
Mr. Bovbjert aptly sums it up: “The big picture is that tort reform works.”
Protect Patients Now wants to put more money in the hands of deserving patients and less money in the pockets of personal injury lawyers.
Read the summary of the AEI Summit here.
An Irreversible Crisis?
Patients in New York State may soon be facing the kind of access to care crisis that brought about the Texas Miracle. Protect Patients Now reported earlier that the state’s insurance department  recently approved a 14% increase in the rates companies can charge doctors, saying it was necessary to prevent “an irreversible crisis.”
As the state’s insurance superintendent said, New York now faces “the worst of both worlds – physicians who cannot afford to practice medicine and insurers whose financial condition is rapidly eroding.”
Clearly, but a 14% hike hardly solves the problem, as evidenced by the plight of New York doctors recently profiled in Long Island’s Newsday . For some doctors, like Scott Berlin, the hike is simply too much. He’s giving up his obstetrics practice, just like his father, Dr. Melvin Berlin, did two years ago. Said Dr. Bernardita Lazo, an OB-GYN in Massapequa who spends close to one third of her earnings on liability insurance, “We love our profession, but it is killing us.” Read the Newsday article here.
If Governor Eliot Spitzer is really serious that he will “tackle this problem head on,” we suggest he read the aforementioned AP story on Texas in the New York Times.
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