Contact: Ray De Lorenzi
202-965-3500 ext. 8369
media.replies@justice.org
AAJ Statement on Deficit Commission Report
Washington, D.C.—The following is a statement from American Association for Justice (AAJ) President Gibson Vance on today’s release of the deficit commission report:
“These dangerous proposals will create a health care system that costs more but produces worse outcomes. Not once does this report mention patient safety and solving the epidemic of medical errors that plague our health care system, costing thousands of lives and billions of dollars each year.
“These radical ideas will guarantee that patients injured by medical errors are left with no recourse, leaving taxpayers to foot the bill and causing our nation’s deficit to rise further. The last thing Americans want is Washington interfering even more with their health care by creating expensive new health courts or controversial practice guidelines that will tie the hands of physicians and create even more government bureaucracy.
“In the last month, both the New England Journal of Medicine and the Department of Health and Human Services have released studies that show the lack of safety in our nation’s hospitals is at crisis levels, with hundreds of people dying daily from medical errors.
“The adoption of this commission report will leave Americans with an unsafe health care system that is less accountable and more costly. Its proposals will be detrimental to all patients and are simply unacceptable.”
