[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17530]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




              MEDICAL MALPRACTICE RELIEF HURTS THE COUNTRY

  (Mr. BERRY asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, we are going to be back here this week and 
try to convince the American people that we are trying to help them 
with their health care costs by passing yet again a medical malpractice 
insurance relief act.
  The really sad thing about this is it does not help the cost of 
health care in this country. It does improve the bottom line 
considerably for the insurance companies. But the most egregious parts 
of this is the way it protects the irresponsible drug companies. We are 
going to provide tort protection. We are going to provide protection 
from lawsuits to Merck who knowingly put a product on the market that 
caused 139,000 Americans to have hearts attacks unnecessarily. And they 
knew it would do that when they put it on the market.
  We are going to provide protection to an industry that cares nothing 
about the health of the people. It cares nothing about anything but 
making a few million more dollars.
  I urge this House to defeat that measure.

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