America's Newspapers Oppose Efforts to Limit Patients' Rights

Excerpts From Recent News Articles and Editorials

Columnist David Morris in the Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Malpractice Suits Aren't What Needs Fixing Here"
January 10, 2005
"The medical insurance system needs fixing. One remedy is to make insurance companies more accountable. Eight of the 10 states with the lowest medical malpractice insurance rates require an approval process before the companies can raise rates."

Boston Globe Editorial: "A Cure for Malpractice"
January 10, 2005
"The problem with medical malpractice is not that a jury occasionally awards $1 million in pain and suffering damages to a victim but that so much malpractice occurs in the first place. This is often overlooked by those whose approach to the malpractice problem begins and ends with putting a cap on damages to victims."

Los Angeles Times Editorial: "Misdirection on Malpractice"
January 10, 2005
"There's not much evidence to support President Bush's assertion last week that medical malpractice awards are to blame for high healthcare costs. For one thing, insurers that have raised malpractice premiums in recent years have tended to do so less because of soaring jury awards than because of declining stock market returns."

New York Times Editorial: "Malpractice Mythology"
January 10, 2005
"'Tort reform,' the Bush administration's answer to the problem of high medical malpractice costs, makes sense from only one aspect: the political…. The problem with the president's approach, which would limit noneconomic damages to a paltry $250,000, is that it would punish many of those most deserving of compensation."

Editorial Editor Tommy Denton in Roanoke Times: "So Much for the Facts on Tort Reform"
January 10, 2005
"At issue is an assault on centuries of evolving common law, the tort system, by which costs of injuries are borne by those who cause them, thus compensating victims and deterring unsafe or negligent conduct….'Frivolous'as a legal concept tends to expand in relation to liability and threats to the corporate bottom line, especially the insurance industry's bottom line."


Joanne Doroshow of the Center for Justice & Democracy in USA Today:
"Patients Are Not the Problem"
January 10, 2005
"In the sensationalized debate over what is causing doctors' insurance premiums to soar, there is typically little talk of the epidemic of medical malpractice that exists in America today. Up to 98,000 people die and hundreds of thousands are injured in hospitals each year due to medical errors."

Provo (UT) Daily Herald: "In Our View: Malpractice Settlements Should be Disclosed"
Sunday, January 9, 2005
"Making it harder for people to sue or to win a just reward in a malpractice case is not the solution. The damage from medical malpractice can be permanent, even fatal. It also represents a betrayal of the trust people put in a physician who takes an oath to do no harm. A court payment can either pay for ongoing medical care or compensate a family that lost a breadwinner."

"Rather than making it harder for people to sue a bad doctor, the system should be designed to help people avoid the doctors most likely to commit malpractice in the first place."

"If people could see how often a doctor has been sued for malpractice, and how much his insurance carrier has paid out in settlements and awards, they'd have a basis for choosing. Such a database could be maintained by the Utah Medical Association as a way of policing their profession, or through DOPL as part of the license verification system."

Akron Beacon Journal Editorial: "Double Standard"
Sunday, January 9, 2005
"Ask just about any economist or corporate executive, and if they choose to be frank, they'll acknowledge that so-called tort reform ranks relatively low on the list of factors contributing to an improved business climate."

Macon Telegraph Editorial: "Award Caps Not Solution to Tort Reform Problem"
January 9, 2005
"The proposal that has not met the common-sense or legitimacy test is damage caps… addressing only one questionable aspect of the problem—malpractice jury awards—to the detriment of the major stakeholders—patients and consumers—does not get at the cause and effect of our finding and keeping quality doctors and hospitals."

Robert B. Reich in The Washington Post: "A Suitable Remedy: When the FDA Is Weak"
Sunday, January 9, 2005
"But the administration can't have it both ways. Either it should move to strengthen regulatory agencies or it should maintain the present system of tort liability. Take away both, and consumers are in deep trouble."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Editorial Board: "Wrong Medicine: Caps"
January 7, 2005
"Pitched as an antidote to what the president calls "junk lawsuits," the proposal would discourage attorneys and injured patients from pursuing justice, interfere with the nation's jury system, override the state's judicial prerogatives and distract attention from the need for stricter oversight and discipline of bad doctors."

"And it would have precious little if any effect on soaring health care costs."

"The answers to lowering the fiscal effects of medical malpractice lie not with arbitrarily limiting compensation to injured patients but with bolstering identification and discipline of dangerous doctors and better regulation of the medical malpractice insurance industry."

The Baltimore Sun: “Bottom line? Worries Over Malpractice Don't Add Up”
January 7, 2005
“How do you suppose the president of the United States arrived at the $250,000 price tag on pain and suffering? Do you think he would be satisfied with $250,000 for pain and suffering if, say, a member of his family sustained abdominal trauma from a fall from a tree swing and bled to death because emergency room physicians didn't make a timely and precise diagnosis? (True story, Baltimore County, 1992. You can look it up.)”

Denver Post: “Let Courts Decide on Doctors”
January 7, 2005
“If the president wants to help cure our medical system, he should push Congress to pass more comprehensive safety procedures for hospitals. That would improve healthcare for consumers and, ultimately, make malpractice insurance cheaper for doctors because there would be fewer mistakes and fewer lawsuits. . . [T]ruly baseless lawsuits don’t routinely survive our adversarial justice system; judges throw them out or juries rule against them. So the president’s proposal [to curtail patient and consumer lawsuits] actually is targeted at lawsuits that have merit. The cap on damages applies only after the judge or jury has concluded that malpractice was committed. President Bush is actually telling doctors: ‘When you’re found guilty of causing death, disability or illness of a patient, Congress should protect you by making sure you never have to pay more than $250,000 for the pain and suffering you inflict.’ . . . When our leaders propose this type of liability protection, they do a real disservice to people who have been injured, and they show real contempt for the U.S. court system and the citizens who serve on juries.” in 2002."

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Updated January 27, 2005