[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15630]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HOUSE POLICY COMMITTEE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BURGESS. Madam Speaker, I come tonight to report on the activity 
of the House policy committee this week. The Subcommittee on Health met 
for a hearing on medical liability insurance, and the purpose of this 
meeting was to outline in the current concept of medical liability 
reform and to point to some of the proven successes and to look at the 
future of reform. This meeting, which was held on Tuesday of this week, 
was attended by Jose Montemayor, who is the insurance commissioner of 
the State of Texas. Mr. Montemayor was appointed by then-Governor 
George Bush and has continued in that capacity since 1998.
  We were also joined by Dr. Brennan Cassidy, a board-certified 
emergency physician from the State of California, who spoke on the 
status of tort reform in that State.
  Paul Bahcarach, the president and CEO of Uniontown Hospital, was at 
our meeting and spoke about the particular problems that they are 
experiencing in Pennsylvania.
  And Donald Palmisano, a physician and lawyer from New Orleans, who is 
the past president of the American Medical Association, spoke to us 
with considerable passion on what he believed some of the answers might 
be in the arena of tort reform.
  First, Commissioner Montemayor from Texas talked about what he had 
seen in Texas since the passage of a major piece of tort reform 
legislation in Texas last year at the end of the regular State 
legislative session; and then in September of last year, September 
2003, a constitutional amendment was passed in the State of Texas which 
allowed this legislation to take effect.
  In Texas, Commissioner Montemayor had seen his number of liability 
insurers, the number of companies that wrote insurance for physicians 
in Texas, decline from a high of 17 to a low of four; and Commissioner 
Montemayor correctly recognized that if that situation continued, 
medical practice as we know it was going to disappear from the State of 
Texas.
  Texas is a large State, and very different regions were affected 
differently. The Rio Grande Valley was particularly hard hit, not 
necessarily in the dollar amounts that were awarded by juries in that 
region, but more so just by the sheer number of lawsuits. Most 
practitioners and physicians in that area could be expected to be sued 
three or four times a year, oftentimes for sums of money not exceeding 
$100,000, but still the time away from family and practice in defending 
those lawsuits and the wear and tear on a doctor's soul was 
considerable in that portion of the State.
  Right before the constitutional amendment passed, there was a 
significant increase in the filing of lawsuits in the State of Texas; 
but since the constitutional amendment passed, the number of suits has 
dropped precipitously.

                              {time}  2300

  Commissioner Montemayor also pointed out to us that there are 
companies that are reducing their insurance rates to physicians in 
Texas as a result of this legislation, a constitutional amendment that 
was passed. And, in fact, Texas Medical Liability Trust, my old insurer 
of record, has reduced their rates by 12 percent this year.
  Another insurer who sought a rate increase and, in fact, had received 
a rate increase of over 100 percent in the State of Oklahoma and 39 
percent in the State of Florida actually is going to receive no rate 
increase in the State of Texas this year.
  So it has been good news on not only the number of insurers that is 
available which has now increased to 12 but also the rates paid by 
hospitals and physicians in Texas has significantly reduced.
  Commissioner Montemayor told us that he thought hospitals had fared 
somewhat better than physicians in this new day that has dawned in the 
State of Texas.
  Dr. Cassidy, the emergency physician from California, was there in 
1975 in California when the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 
1975 was passed in California by a Governor of California who was on 
the Democratic side, Jerry Brown, past candidate for president.
  But Dr. Cassidy related how the $250,000 cap on non-economic damages 
had stood the test of time, and in fact he had some rather graphic 
evidence showing how rates in that State had stayed relatively stable 
while rates across the country had exploded.
  Paul Bahcarach, the chief executive officer of Uniontown, 
Pennsylvania hospital where the situation has far from improved, in 
fact, the situation has deteriorated in Pennsylvania significantly over 
the past years, told some rather poignant stories of the inability to 
hire, to attract physicians to the State of Pennsylvania. He was not 
able to cover services that he wanted to provide; and, in fact, he told 
of a service area of 148,000 people that was serviced by one single 
ear, nose and throat physician. If I have done my arithmetic right, 
that is about one ENT doctor for 300,000 ears, which is a lot of ears 
to be responsible for in a community.
  Dr. Palmisano, the general surgeon from New Orleans who has been the 
past president of the American Medical Association, again spoke with a 
good deal of passion on what he saw as some of the solutions available 
to us. We will talk about this in nights to come.
  Dr. Palmisano gave excellent testimony on how the doctors in this 
country are engaged and see this as a real problem, threatening to 
their profession.

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