[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 54 (Monday, May 8, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4119-S4120]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           HEALTH CARE REFORM

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, at this point I would like to briefly 
extend some comments I made at the end of last week on the issue of the 
medical liability bills that are before this body.
  On Friday, the Senate filed cloture on the medical liability reform 
bill--or actually two bills--and we will vote on at least one of those 
bills today, this afternoon. All of this centers around the fact that 
our broken medical liability system is hurting every American, every 
patient, every physician, and the health care system. But the important 
thing is that it hurts every American. It is an issue that, as a 
physician as well as a Senator, concerns me deeply. Indeed, it needs to 
concern and should concern every single American who is walking or will 
walk into a doctor's office. That is because every American is 
suffering from the high costs which are totally unnecessary and, in 
many ways, frivolous and out of control.
  A litigation lottery system is what it really is that we suffer from 
today. Each year, health care costs are rising three to four times 
faster than the average American's paycheck, and that is in part--in 
part--driven by this litigation lottery system, a system that is 
driving up costs, and when it drives up costs, it drives up the 
premiums that not just doctors pay, because those premiums are passed 
on to the patients and potential patients, but it drives up costs, 
diminishes access to health care today, and thus diminishes quality for 
every American. Access to quality issues are equally important to the 
costs, but they are all interrelated.
  Innocent doctors and patients are being punished because of the greed 
of a few opportunistic trial lawyers who are exploiting the system the 
way it is currently configured. Thus, the legislation that we propose 
and that we hope we will be able to debate on the floor reforms that 
system--it fixes the system--with a sense of fairness and commonsense 
reform.

  This is an issue which I have been compelled to bring back to the 
floor again and again, really on principle, because it is the right 
thing to do. In

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the last Congress, in the 108th Congress, I attempted to bring medical 
liability reform to the Senate on three separate occasions. Each time, 
a minority of Senators blocked consideration and prevented an up-or-
down vote on those pieces of legislation. Indeed, although we will have 
to see how the votes fall here in about 4 or 5 hours, they may do so 
again today. But I am going to remain determined to press for action on 
principle because it is the right thing to do. It boils down to the 
fact that health care dollars should be spent on patients and not on 
lawyers who are out abusing the system--on patients and not lawyers. It 
is a clear choice.
  Last week, I talked a little bit about my own son Harrison who 
traveled with me to town meetings around the country a couple of years 
ago. We went to Florida, we went to Pennsylvania, and we went to Ohio 
and talked about a range of issues. Being a physician and a Senator, 
doctors would come up to me again and again and tell their stories 
about having to stop practicing their specialty, a neurosurgeon or an 
obstetrician who has to stop delivering babies, or actually moving out 
of Pennsylvania down to other States in the South or out of Ohio or out 
of Florida because they really had no choice. At the end of that trip, 
my son said: Dad, I know you love medicine and that is your life. My 
granddad was a family physician and loved it, and both my uncles are 
physicians. But why in the world, Dad, would you encourage me to go 
into a profession where everybody gets sued--not just once but again 
and again and again--even if they have done nothing wrong?
  That is what hurts and also really scares me because it means we are 
going to lose a whole generation of good people, committed people who 
care about treating patients, who simply aren't going to go into the 
profession because they don't want to expose themselves or, more 
importantly, their own families to these frivolous lawsuits. It is 
happening.
  I hope everybody listening to this debate over the next few hours and 
hopefully several days will ask their physicians, whoever they are--
pick up the phone and call them or e-mail or if you are going to the 
doctor's office ask them: Does this medical liability stuff really mean 
that you are unable to treat patients in the way you otherwise would? 
It really is affecting cost and access and quality? Just ask them, and 
I guarantee the answer will be yes.
  Access to care. Across the country right now, one out of two counties 
does not have an OB-GYN. That means mothers or expectant mothers are 
having to drive extra miles, as fewer and fewer people deliver babies, 
in order to have their babies delivered. Three-quarters of 
neurosurgeons will no longer operate on children, in large part because 
of the number of lawsuits. Increasingly, neurosurgeons are not taking 
trauma calls at the local hospital wherever you live in the world today 
because they know by taking that trauma call, their malpractice 
premiums, their liability premiums skyrocket because of the likelihood, 
even if they give good care, of being sued.
  I have seen it and heard about it, talking again and again to my own 
medical colleagues and in traveling across Tennessee. In Tennessee, 81 
out of the 95 Tennessee counties don't have a neurosurgeon. Half don't 
have an orthopedic surgeon, an emergency physician, or an OB-GYN. 
Average malpractice premiums for Tennessee doctors have increased 90 
percent--90 percent--in the last 6 years.
  As a result of all of this, my colleagues in Tennessee tell me, or at 
least nearly three-quarters of them tell me--and in a recent survey--
that their medical communities already have a shortage of the high-risk 
specialties, the trauma specialists, the obstetricians, the 
neurosurgeons, and those same counties are having a hard time 
recruiting new physicians. Nobody is going to move into a county where 
those premiums are sky high and the risk of them being sued is so high.
  We have to reform the system. We can do it with commonsense reforms. 
The reforms have been laid out in the legislation.
  The nationwide picture is very similar. The AMA, the American Medical 
Association, says we have reached crisis proportions in 21 States, 
including Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, and 
Tennessee. Families in these States are simply not getting the quality 
of care they need because of these out-of-control liability premiums.
  Right now, if you talk to obstetricians, about one out of seven 
stopped delivering babies, and they point to the reason of the 
skyrocketing medical liability costs. We talk about the doctors and we 
talk about their premiums, but let's remember that as a result of those 
costs and premiums, you lose the access, you lose the availability. The 
excessive costs, the waste--it doesn't go down to the doctor-patient 
relationship; it doesn't mean you get better care. Ultimately, it is 
the patients who suffer. It is the American people who suffer--not the 
doctors, not just their premiums. Ultimately, it is the patient's care 
that suffers.
  High-risk specialists. Again, I say this as a cardiac surgeon talking 
about my colleagues, but the neurosurgeons I mentioned are the ones who 
are getting hit the hardest. Emergency room staff are being depleted. 
That is a big concern. I will cite it again and again on the floor: If 
something happens to you driving home today, is there going to be a 
neurosurgeon there to take care of that head injury? Increasingly, it 
is less likely that you will have that sort of expertise there in the 
emergency room.
  We know how to address this crisis. This is the good news. We know 
there are things we can do that work. Commonsense reform, based on 
principle, is not all that hard to do.
  I was in Texas last month, about 3 or 4 weeks ago, talking to the 
doctors there, and they have seen the results of a reform movement that 
is alive and well and has had an impact. Since 2003, the rate of 
malpractice filings has declined by 80 percent in most major Texas 
counties. This year alone, the rate cuts by five major Texas insurers 
will save physicians nearly $49 million in premium payments. They say 
they save physicians $49 million and, remember, all of those premiums 
just get passed on to the American people and get translated into 
higher premiums that you pay for your monthly health care security. 
Between 3,000 and 4,000 doctors have moved into the State, into Texas, 
where just the opposite is happening in Pennsylvania and Ohio and 
Florida, where physicians are moving out of the State.
  The Texas story is a true success story. Because of this inequity 
from State to State, we need a national approach.
  As I mentioned, we will be voting in a few hours on the medical 
liability reform bills. These bills are a part of a larger vision of 
health care which is patient centered--patient centered--which is 
provider friendly, which centers on 21st century information and choice 
and an element of control. But this is a major piece in reaching that 
vision. We need our doctors and hospitals and offices to be places 
which they are intended to be--places of healing and not minefields for 
greedy, predatory lawyers who are simply exploiting a system that needs 
to be reformed.
  Mr. President, I encourage my colleagues to vote today for cloture so 
that we can discuss both of these medical liability bills. My 
colleagues know well that the medical liability system does need 
reform, and as a physician and as a Senator, I know we can deliver 
these meaningful reforms, and I intend to do so. I hope we are given 
that opportunity. I encourage all of our colleagues to vote for cloture 
so we can address these bills.

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