Call it the “Ding Bat” bill.

Ship Island

the nation’s indebtness will be on the backs of the taxpayers.  30 million cost to the government? 
Why would any sane person support this mess?

VOTE THEM ALL OUT! We need fiscally responsible people in both houses!

You can read this monstrosity at:

http://docs.house.gov/rules/health/111_ahcaa.pdf

On pages 1431-1433, there is a financial incentive for states to try “alternative medical liability laws.”

But look — you don’t get the incentive if you have a law that would “limit attorneys’ fees or impose caps on damages.

so yet again NO tort reform from the Dems.  What say you, Travis Childers?????

freaking trial attorneys run the world.

Well, Mississippi put a cap on non-economic damages and it had a dramatic effect on med-mal lawsuits, dropping the number, eliminating the junk, and stabilizing the premiums.  Now the premiums are even decreasing.  So we know this worked.  Is loser pays on the prohibited list of reforms?  Let’s try that “alternative” (it is used in almost every other country in the world) and see what that does!

Rubradog,
Actually most of the “medmals” lawsuits were merely suits against doctors for prescribing drugs for their correct use.  The lawyers would sue the doctors for “malpractice” simply to keep litigation in Miss. and not in the national class actions.  I knew one surgeon that prescribed stadol for its proper purpose and had to pay $365,000 in one day to his insurance company for his deductible for getting sued 73 times in one day.  the doctors’ attorneys would not raise this, because they were billing the hell out of the files.  I think the elimination of outside suits, the immunity giving to middlemen in products liability suits, and elimination of mass joinder did more to keep premiums down then capping on non-economic damages.  Also, Justice Randolph and Dickinson had a great effect also.

Favre is back:  I based my statement on a talk given by an officer of the Miss. State Medical Association’s captive insurance company and by a personal conversation with two plaintiff attorneys.  The plaintiff attorneys did add that the drug suits frequently named the doctors although they planned to drop them after they got the case going in state courts but they did not HAVE to drop them and sometimes did not.  One of them told me that he made most of his money from cases where the non-economic damages portion was going to be substantial while the economic losses were low.  Now, he refuses those cases.  The MSMA folks said it cost about $30,000 each to defend those cases so each one not filled is $30K saved.  There used to be a lot of them filed, but no longer.