[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 13]
[House]
[Page 17755]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    A THREAT TO QUALITY HEALTH CARE

  (Mr. PRICE of Georgia asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. PRICE of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, 20 States including my home State 
of Georgia are experiencing a medical liability crisis. Hospitals are 
shutting their doors, doctors are leaving the profession, and patients 
are the ones left out in the cold.
  OB-GYN doctors and some surgeons are paying hundreds of thousands of 
dollars a year in insurance premiums. One-third of the OB doctors in my 
State no longer deliver babies because delivering a baby is defined as 
a ``high-risk procedure.'' Other specialists no longer cover emergency 
procedures.
  One tragic story I am reminded of is a man who came to the emergency 
room after a fall with a subdural hematoma, or ``bleeding on the 
brain.'' What is required to treat this is a relatively simple 
procedure performed by a neurosurgeon to relieve pressure on the brain. 
Instead of being saved, he died; and he died because there were no 
neurosurgeons at the hospital due to frivolous lawsuits and 
skyrocketing insurance rates.
  Mr. Speaker, court rooms are interfering with our operating rooms and 
are threatening health care quality and raising the cost of health care 
for all Americans.
  The HEALTH Act puts patients first and will protect our health care 
system for us and for our children and for our grandchildren. I urge my 
colleagues to support H.R. 5. Vote for the HEALTH Act.

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