[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 9]
[House]
[Pages 12793-12794]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     MEDICAL MALPRACTICE INSURANCE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Foley) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. FOLEY. Mr. Speaker, we spend a lot of time in Congress talking 
about health care, and reasonably so, we should. Health care is 
probably the one thing none of us as citizens can totally control on 
our own. We can exercise, diet. We can work out. We can do all the 
right things, but we may be stricken at sometime in our life with 
Lupus, leukemia, Alzheimer's, AIDS, cancer, any number of maladies that 
face us. It is important to talk about these subjects because it is 
important for Congress to grapple with these issues.

                              {time}  1045

  There is also a looming issue that needs to be discussed, vetted and 
a solution found for, and that is medical malpractice insurance rates. 
Florida particularly has been inundated with liability crises and 
looming coverage where we may see our physicians unable to afford any 
coverage at all, and if they can find it, the cost prohibitive for them 
to continue to practice their vital roles that they play in society.
  Malpractice rates have been rising 20 to 40 percent per year, 20 to 
40 percent per year, while inflation has remained virtually stagnant. 
The hardest-hit doctors in Florida are over 50,000 obstetricians, 
radiologists, orthopedic surgeons, lung specialists, oncologists, among 
the list of people.
  Average damage awards, which is part of the root problem, ordered by 
courts have doubled over the past 3 years, meaning jury awards for 
courts have increased damage awards substantially and significantly. 
Hospitals, one insurer increased a local hospital rate to $1.5 million 
this year from $500,000 a year ago. That is a tripling of premium, 
which any person can routinely understand that if we add an expense 
like that to a category, it has to come out of somewhere; and 
ultimately we pay more for health care, pay more for all the services 
provided for indigents and others in our community.
  Some doctors are paying up to 80 percent of their annual income in 
premiums. Many people snicker and say physicians make a lot of money. I 
beg to differ. Some do, but most have been working tirelessly to 
provide the important roles they do for society and are often 
compromised because they are not only having to pay extraordinary 
liability insurance, but with all the regulations and all the attendant 
things that they are expected to do, including continuing medical 
education and the like, they are consequently under the great glare of 
looming bankruptcy or finding themselves wanting to leave the practice 
of medicine that they have loved doing for all their life.
  We need to do something about this issue. It needs to revolve around 
getting the parties together, and this is not a shot at the trial 
lawyers, but they have to be intimately involved in some of these 
discussions where there would be another system like a loser pay 
something where at least the onus is on those bringing charges, to be 
certain they have valuable and vital suits to bring to the courts. 
Oftentimes litigation ends with a letter to the plaintiff defendant, 
ultimately trying to shake down a few dollars, and hopefully the 
insurance company will settle because they will tell us it is more 
expensive to go to court than to settle out of court; and consequently, 
doctors are hemorrhaging incomes because of these consequences.
  I do not stand aside or take any notion that we should excuse 
wrongful and wilful malpractice. Somebody cuts off the wrong limb, 
absolutely the person who has been aggrieved demands full compensation 
for damages rendered. That is not what we are talking about. We are 
talking about a system

[[Page 12794]]

that has run amuck; that does not recognize dangerous procedures that 
were done to people, devastating their lives and frivolous lawsuits.
  This Congress nationally, as well as legislators in 50 States, needs 
to grapple with this issue because I can tell my colleagues today that 
if this does not get resolved soon, we will have a mass exodus of 
professionals leaving health care, a mass exodus because they can 
simply no longer afford the premiums that this malpractice insurance 
costs. It is affecting hospitals. It is affecting nursing homes. It is 
affecting practitioners. It is affecting every American, because as 
these rates rise, they must be passed on to others, and that is the 
patient. The patient pays more; health insurance becomes less 
available. Cost of treatment and facilities increases; cost of health 
care premiums skyrocket. Costs to the consumers in every product, good 
or service produced, sold or distributed in this country is 
exponentially increased because of the underlying costs of these 
looming crises.
  So we can stand here and do nothing, afraid to tackle a tough issue; 
or we should include it in at least the act of debate.

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