It’s A Scam
Mustang Bobby wrote about the Potemkin Town Hall held by Senators John McCain (R-AZ), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Mel Martinez (R-FL) in Hialeah, Florida. One of the lines in the news article, “McConnell’s call to protect doctors from lawsuits drew steady applause”, shows the ignorance of everyone there, as well as the news media.
Florida is one of 38 states that passed a “tort reform” law, limiting the rights of patients to recover punitive compensation in malpractice suits. JEB Bush called a special session of the legislature to get the law passed because the cost of malpractice insurance was supposedly a major burden for Florida’s doctors and the insurance companies said that they would be able to lower rates if there was tort reform.
The state probably spent more on that special session than doctors saved on malpractice insurance since that law was passed. If there were any real savings, it was obviously channeled to the healthy profit margins of the insurance companies, not to reduce rates.
I don’t want to point fingers, but very few malpractice suits are actually filed in the US, which is amazing as we know that about 100,000 people a year die from identified medical mistakes. The bulk of the money awarded is for the medical care that the victims have had and will need to have to correct the mistake. HR-676 would eliminate that cost. Medical malpractice suits are almost unheard of in countries with universal health care.
