[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 69 (Monday, May 17, 2004)]
[House]
[Page H3023]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




 HOUSE-PASSED MEDICAL LIABILITY REFORM EXPECTED TO STALL IN OTHER BODY

  (Mr. BURGESS asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BURGESS. Mr. Speaker, last week in this House, we passed yet 
another version of the medical liability reform act in this Congress. 
We passed similar legislation in March 2003. That bill that we passed 
last year and likely the bill that we pass this year is going to stop 
dead on the other side of the Capitol and will not be enacted.
  It is a shame, Mr. Speaker. Right now we have a President in the 
White House who has said he will sign this bill into law if it is given 
to him. We have a candidate running for the office of President who has 
either voted ``no'' or been absent when that vote has come up across 
the rotunda on the other side of the Capitol.
  Mr. Speaker, this is important. I met with a group of doctors back in 
my district this weekend. There is no greater peril to our profession 
of medicine than the current medical justice system. The reforms that 
we have passed in this House closely mirror the Medical Injury 
Compensation Reform Act of 1975 passed in the State of California that 
has brought some semblance of sanity back to the medical justice system 
in that State. Residents of the other States, physicians in the other 
States, and their patients deserve no less.

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