[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 5953-5954]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                        MEDICAL LIABILITY REFORM

  Mr. ENSIGN. Mr. President, the theme we are talking about this 
morning is obstructionism. We have heard about judges. Later on we are 
going to hear about the Democrats obstructing legislation that would 
create jobs in the United States. It is called the FSC/ETI bill. It 
really is a jobs bill. This is legislation that will actually bring 
hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of jobs back home to the United 
States. Democrats have been blocking, as far as jobs are concerned, 
asbestos reform, bankruptcy reform, class action litigation reform--all 
of those items make American companies less competitive and make it 
tougher to have new job growth in the United States.
  Outsourcing is a big issue. As we hear more and more about this 
issue, we have to understand some of the reasons surrounding it. Right 
now the other side of the aisle is blocking a lot of the legislation 
that would allow companies to bring new jobs to this country to make 
our country more competitive.
  What I want to talk about this morning very briefly is the answer to 
what has caused a severe access to care crisis in many States, and that 
is the issue of the medical liability reform. My home State, the State 
of Nevada, is one of those 19 States that are truly in crisis. In fact, 
only five States across the United States are showing no signs of a 
crisis. Unfortunately, the rest of the states are all headed in 
Nevada's direction, and it is only going to continue to get worse 
unless we fix the problem right here in Washington, DC. This is a 
national problem and it requires an immediate national solution.
  One of the main reasons we need a national solution is because the 
Federal Government now pays 60 percent--60, 6-0 percent--of all the 
medical bills in the United States with regard to Medicare, Medicaid, 
and the Veterans Administration. There is a huge amount of money the 
Federal Government pays in taxpayer dollars that goes toward paying 
medical bills in this country.
  For this and many other reasons this is a national problem that 
requires a national solution. We are losing doctors and other medical 
professionals at an alarming rate all over America. They are not going 
into the specialty and high-risk fields, especially in the numbers that 
we need in this country. There used to be a huge demand for many of 
these residencies. Now, some of our schools cannot even fill their 
residency programs. Unbelievably, often times they are not even getting 
any applications for these residencies.
  A few weeks ago I heard about the problems in Utah. There are 
tremendous medical facilities there. They are having problems getting 
doctors to go into some of the fields we want our best and our 
brightest to go into--those fields that require the most technically 
brilliant people--because of the fear that when they get out of medical 
school they will not be able to afford to practice because the medical 
liability premiums are too high.
  Why are the medical liability premiums too high? Well, it is pretty 
simple. It is because we have an overly-litigious society where 
unscrupulous trial lawyers basically say bring your Rolodex and we will 
find out who we can sue. More and more, this practice has spread into 
the medical profession where hard-working and honest professionals are 
being subjected to frivolous lawsuits.
  I am a veterinarian, and I know medicine is not an exact science. 
Mistakes are made. If there is medical malpractice, the patient 
deserves to get compensated, no questions asked, and our civil justice 
system has the ability to do that. But because the courts are so filled 
up with frivolous lawsuits these days, and some of the jury awards are 
so incredibly high, it motivates people to basically say let's go hit 
the lawsuit lottery because the system is broken. It is a situation 
where because of the backlog, the people who are really injured die 
before they ever get compensation. It can take 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 years in 
the courts before their case actually has a final resolution, and that 
is unacceptable for those patients who are injured. That is one of the 
major reasons we need to have medical liability reform. Unfortunately, 
the other side continues to obstruct our efforts in this area.
  If opponents want to debate differences, if they want to amend the 
bill, fine, but they will not even let us go to a vote on a bill. In 
fact, they keep obstructing us even moving to debate a bill. They are 
filibustering, just as they are doing on judges and many other things. 
It is a shame because it is a crisis. It is a crisis with OB/GYNs--
arguably the most dire of circumstances with regard to access to care--
but it is also a crisis with trauma doctors, neurosurgeons, and even 
with general surgeons.
  Some of the best people who practice medicine in my State are either 
leaving practice or now, unfortunately, not

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going into those high-risk specialties. We need to enact reform to 
protect every American's access to quality care, and to keep the best 
and the brightest practicing and entering into the medical profession. 
In order to so, this obstructionism by our opponents must stop, and it 
must stop right now.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada has yielded the floor. 
Who seeks recognition?
  The Senator from Nevada.

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