[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 1]
[Senate]
[Pages 1281-1282]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              TORT REFORM

  Mr. FRIST. Mr. President, I will close by making a few very brief 
remarks on Judge Alberto Gonzales. The opportunity is being provided 
for all Senators to express themselves on this very important 
nomination. I am confident that the nomination will be confirmed 
tomorrow afternoon or tomorrow evening. The debate is important, and I 
encourage all of our colleagues to keep it civil and nonpartisan, as 
much as practically possible, over the next 48 hours.
  I will talk very briefly about a topic the President will speak to 
tonight, I am quite certain, and that is restoring commonsense balance 
to our legal system and to our tort system. I mention that because as 
the Democratic leader and I have agreed, we will be coming to an 
important aspect of class action reform next week.
  I think of Dr. Chet Gentry of the Cumberland Family Care Clinic in 
Sparta, TN, who does not deliver babies anymore, does not practice 
obstetrics anymore. When one asks him why, without any hesitation, 
crystal clear, it is because his insurance premiums grew too high. 
Simply, he could not afford to deliver babies, and by dropping 
obstetrics he cut the insurance premiums he has to pay for this 
privilege of practicing medicine by two-thirds, down from $38,000 a 
year to $14,000 a year. So by not delivering babies, he cuts his 
insurance premiums down that dramatically. There is an incentive to not 
take care of moms when they are going through this wonderful process of 
giving birth.
  In a rural community as small as Sparta--and it has a relatively 
small population, only 5,000 people--losing Dr. Gentry's services for 
families is a huge blow. Eighteen months ago, that town had five family 
physicians. Today, there are three doing obstetrics, delivering babies, 
and only two of them will perform C-sections.
  Dr. Gentry--again, I use him as an example--warns:

       In this small community of Sparta, which serves several 
     surrounding rural counties, the cost of malpractice insurance 
     is affecting access to care. It's already difficult to 
     recruit physicians to rural areas, and the malpractice crisis 
     threatens to make it worse.

  The issue is not just cost, it is not just money, it is access to 
care, whether it is trauma care or finding an obstetrician who will 
take care of you through the 9 months of pregnancy and deliver your 
baby. It is an access issue.
  This out-of-control litigation is reaching a crisis point in 
Tennessee. In 29 other States it has already reached a crisis point. 
Seventy percent of doctors who have practiced in Tennessee for more 
than 10 years have had a claim filed against them. Does that mean that 
7 out of 10 doctors in one State are conducting malpractice, bad health 
care? No, of course not.
  If one looks at the studies of obstetrics, OB/GYN, 92 percent have 
had a claim against them. That is 9 out of every 10 doctors who have 
been delivering babies for more than 10 years. For cardiac surgeons, 
heart surgeons, not a higher risk but in some ways a higher risk field, 
one of the more common operations done across the country today is 
cardiac surgery--92 percent out of the physicians, 9 out of 10 
physicians who have practiced more than 10 years, have had a suit filed 
against them.
  Average malpractice insurance premiums have increased, so it is a 
problem, but it is a problem that is getting worse. Look over the last 
5 years; these premiums have increased by 84 percent. The premiums go 
up because when the frivolous lawsuits increase, it creates a heavier 
burden and that is passed on, of course, to physicians. In Tennessee, 
OB/GYNs can expect to pay $60,000 a year in insurance premiums; heart 
surgeons, about $55,000; and general surgeons, $40,000. All of that is 
high. That is just to pay for the insurance. Remember, Tennessee is not 
yet a crisis State. If a doctor is in Pennsylvania, Ohio, or down in 
Florida, they are paying two to three times that. Some neurosurgeons, 
trauma surgeons, are having to pay insurance of $300,000, some even 
$400,000, a year for the privilege of taking care of people in the 
event there is an accident.

[[Page 1282]]

  Dr. Martin Olsen, chair of OB/GYN division at East Tennessee State 
University, reports that their clinic in the rural town of Mountain 
City, TN, had to shut down because of unaffordable insurance costs. 
Cocke County meanwhile has lost 7 of its 12 doctors who deliver babies.
  The problem is not limited to Tennessee. It is not even limited to 
the practice of medicine. I use that as an example because the impact 
these litigations costs and frivolous lawsuits have on medicine and 
health care is so dramatic to me as a physician, as I look at my 
physician colleagues.
  Across the country, American businesses, doctors, plaintiffs, court 
systems, and taxpayers, are all being victimized by frivolous 
litigation, by out-of-control litigation. Now is the time to change 
that. That opportunity is before us.
  In 2003, the tort system cost about $250 billion overall. Much of 
that, maybe half of that--I do not even know what the figure is--is 
obviously well spent. What we want to do is squeeze the waste, the 
frivolous lawsuits, out of the system. That figure of $250 billion 
means of an unnecessary tax of about $850 for every man, woman, and 
child. So it is bad now. At the current rate of increase, which 
outpaces the growth of our GDP, gross domestic product, it is estimated 
that per capita cost will go above $1,000 by 2006. That means for a 
family of 4, there is a tort tax of about $4,000.
  The tort system accounts for about 2.23 percent of our GDP. That is 
equal to the entire economy of the State of Washington or more than 
that of the State of Tennessee, my own State. Where does all that money 
go? Unfortunately, less than half of it gets to the victims, the people 
who have been victimized and hurt. They need to be fully compensated. 
We all agree with that. The problem is, less than half of the money 
goes to the victims, which is the purpose of the tort system, and the 
other half of it goes to administrative costs and, of course, to the 
trial lawyers, the personal injury lawyers.
  There are lots of different examples. Take the case of the Coca-Cola 
apple juice dispute. It is really on the apple juice end of this, that 
the plaintiffs' lawyers charged that the drink company was improperly 
adding sweeteners to its apple juice. So as compensation, the attorneys 
managed to secure a 50-cent coupon for each of the apple juice victims 
while at the same time the lawyers walked away with $1.5 million for 
themselves.
  The system is out of balance. We will bring it back into balance. 
Small businesses get dragged into this irrational tort system. There is 
example after example that we all have. The system clearly needs to be 
reformed. Cherry-picking favorable counties to land billion-dollar 
settlements undermines the core principles of our legal system. Those 
principles are fairness and equity. These are the sorts of issues that 
the Judiciary Committee will be addressing tomorrow in committee and 
that we will be addressing on the floor of the Senate next week.
  As our distinguished colleague from New York, Senator Schumer, has 
explained on the Senate floor, too many lawsuits are filed in local 
courts that have no connection to the plaintiff, the defendant, or the 
conduct at issue. If the case affects the Nation as a whole, it should 
be heard in a Federal court.
  We have other areas of litigation that need to be addressed and 
hopefully will be addressed in the near future. Asbestos litigation has 
bankrupted 70 companies; 18 companies have been bankrupted in the last 
24 months. It means job losses--60,000 jobs have been lost, with 
billions of dollars taken out of our economy without the patients or 
individuals with cancer being adequately compensated in a timely way. 
So squeeze the waste and abuse and in some cases the fraud out of the 
system--that is our goal--and return these systems back into systems of 
integrity.
  I am very excited about where we are going in terms of addressing the 
tort issues in a balanced, bipartisan way. We will justly compensate 
those who have been injured by careless or reckless actions, and we 
want to hold those who commit these actions to account.
  Since our country's founding, the tort system often has been a force 
of justice and positive change, but today that justice is being junked 
by trial attorneys looking for these multimillion-dollar windfalls, and 
that is what we need to address. We will take action to end the abuse 
in these lawsuits on the floor of the Senate. It will be done for the 
sake of true victims who deserve fair compensation, for the prosperity 
and health of our people, and for the integrity of our Government.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________