America's Newspapers Oppose Efforts to Limit Patients' Rights

Excerpts From Recent News Articles and Editorials

Waco Tribune of Texas Editorial: "Three Part Problem"
January 18, 2005
". . . [T]he huge insurance industry reportedly made more profits than ever in its history last year. It has administrative costs hundreds of times more costly that Medicare. It overwhelms state regulators and has powerful, deep-pocketed lobbyists to protect its profits. For the most part, states do a woefully poor job policing bad doctors. It is estimated that nearly 100,000 patients die each year and several times that many are injured in U.S. hospitals as a result of medical errors. Tort reform is only part of the solution. Bush and Congress also should push for stronger regulation of the insurance industry and a get-tough attitude toward weeding out incompetent doctors."

Des Moines Register Editorial: "Tort reform: Instead, Reduce Medical Errors"
January 16, 2005
"If Congress really wants reduce the number of lawsuits people file against doctors, they should work to reduce the medical errors that cause them. Nearly 100,000 people are injured or die each year due to medical errors. Fewer errors mean fewer lawsuits. Medical errors could be reduced by mandating that hospitals implement computer systems that monitor medications and reduce mistakes."

Roanoke Times Editorial: "The President's Problems"
January 16, 2005
"Instead of confronting those problems [number of uninsured, Iraq war, budget deficits] meaningfully, Bush seems fixated on undermining Social Security, on widening further the growing income gap between affluent and average Americans and on demagoguing away the nation's persistent health care problems by blaming them all on greedy medical-malpractice lawyers . . . Yet on this [real Medicare, Medicaid funding challenges] , the president is strangely silent except to call for capping medical-malpractice awards, which at most would make only a dent in the problem."

Columnist Bob Herbert in New York Times: "A Gift for Drug Makers"
January 14, 2005
“The provision would go beyond caps on certain damages. It would actually prohibit punitive damages in cases in which the drug or medical device had received Food and Drug Administration approval. We know the F.D.A. has failed time and again to ensure that unsafe drugs are kept off the market. To provide blanket legal protection against punitive damages in such cases is both unwarranted and dangerous.”

New York Daily News: "Tort Reformers, Heal Thy Selves"
January 13, 2005
“President Bush has finally found real weapons of mass destruction right here in America’s courts . . . This war is apparently Bush’s top domestic priority. It’s not the economy, stupid, it’s the trial lawyers!

“The cons and neocons of the American Tort Reform movement are the bunco artists of our time, and as such fly from facts as Dracula from the cross.

“What tort reformers have done brilliantly is to merge frivolous lawsuits into the real thing…[Frivolous] suits are rare. The reason? They cost too much to file. Trial lawyers finance these cases themselves, with contingent fees – which tort reformers would abolish.”


Boulder Daily Camera: "Tortured Tort Logic: 'Solution' to health-care costs is anything but"
January 12, 2005
"… there's ample evidence that the real way to take the pressure off doctors is not tort reform, but insurance reform."

Columnist Robert Landauer in the Portland Oregonian: "Lawsuits Not Doctors' Real Problem"
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
"President Bush again is more eager to protect corporate profits than consumers injured by medical malpractice or gouged by high drug prices."

"The CBO says it has found no evidence that malpractice-liability restrictions reduce spending on 'defensive' medicine. Nor could it find any significant difference in per capita health care spending between states with and without limits on malpractice awards."

"The evidence tells me that malpractice-insurance premiums have more to do with insurance companies' flawed underwriting practices and their success (or failure) in investing their idle funds than in their payouts to settle patients' legal claims."

"Reforms are needed, but they center on insurance companies, not on injured consumers seeking redress."

Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board: "The Hype over 'Tort Reform': Rhetoric over Reality"
January 10, 2005
"The congressional fixes for this "crisis" proposed by Bush and allies are as overwrought as their rhetoric. At worst, these measures could deny court access to citizens with legitimate cases. At best, they'd have minimal impact on doctors' insurance premiums and health-care costs."

Tampa Tribune: "No Need For Federal Controls On Medical Malpractice Awards"
January 10, 2005
"President Bush's call for a federally enacted cap on damage awards in medical malpractice cases is misguided on two fronts."

"First, the issue is one that ought to remain under the control of state governments. One size doesn't fit all. What jurors deem adequate compensation in Peoria doesn't necessarily fit the circumstances in Seattle or Tampa.

Second, the jury is still out on whether caps enhance medical care in any significant way—either by expanding access, protecting providers or improving quality. In states where caps are already in place, insurance premiums have continued to climb, forcing physicians to make tough choices about how they practice medicine."

Winston-Salem Journal Editorial: "Eliminate the Problem"
Monday, January 10, 2005
"The facts do not support the president. High insurance rates are just as much the result of insurance-company investment policies and legitimate claims by those who have been injured by a doctor's mistakes."

National Correspondent and Columnist John Farmer in New Jersey Star-Ledger:
"The President Prescribes Retribution"
January 10, 2005
"A study by the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, using the experience in California and statistics developed by the federal government's General Accounting Office, makes the case that capping jury awards has had little impact on malpractice insurance rates. What works best, the foundation found, is tighter regulation of the insurance industry."

"The industry likes to claim it loses money on malpractice coverage. And some companies undoubtedly do. But on the whole, the industry is profitable beyond the wildest dreams of avarice. Moreover, the opportunity for cooking the books is greater in the insurance dodge than in almost any other line of work. The industry is not subject to federal regulation; indeed, it's exempt even from antitrust laws."

"In using the crisis to settle a political score with the trial lawyers, Bush is guilty of presidential malpractice."

Additional excerpts

Updated January 27, 2005