[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 5]
[Senate]
[Pages 7096-7097]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                  HEALTH CARE AND MEDICAL MALPRACTICE

  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, next week this Senate is going to consider 
one of the most important issues that we will consider as a Congress 
and as a nation, and that issue is health care. All of us know that the 
cost of health care, the cost of health insurance, and, in many cases, 
access to doctors around the country is becoming a serious problem. 
Many are uninsured. It is an issue we talk about a lot in the Senate, 
but it is an issue we haven't done a lot about.
  This is like some other issues, I am afraid, where our tongue doesn't 
exactly match our action. We heard a lot of talk on the Senate floor 
about jobs and jobs going overseas, but when the proposals come up to 
make America the best place in the world to do business, to lower the 
cost of doing business in this country, to continue investment tax 
credits, to put some caps on frivolous lawsuits, to reduce the costly 
and unnecessary regulations, and even to do things that make energy 
less expensive so we can manufacture in this country, I am afraid my 
colleagues, particularly my Democratic colleagues, block those actions 
and, again, unfortunately, pit business against people and profits 
against jobs. What we know and most Americans know is that people have 
jobs with businesses, and businesses that don't have profits don't 
create jobs.
  Our rhetoric needs to match our action. We need to stop blocking 
legislation that needs to be done and blaming other folks when it 
doesn't get done.
  We have seen the same thing happen with energy, unfortunately. For 
the last several decades, my Democratic colleagues have blocked the 
development of America's energy supplies, blocked our own energy 
independence, even back in the seventies, when President Carter stopped 
the development of nuclear power generation and our European allies 
moved on to where now 80 percent of their electricity comes from clean 
and efficient nuclear power. Even the founder of Greenpeace has come 
back and said it was a mistake to stop that. Yet today we make 
electricity with natural gas, which is increasing the demand for 
natural gas and has raised the prices so that many of our manufacturers 
can no longer compete because of the high cost of energy in this 
country. And the price keeps going up.
  We have seen the same thing happen with oil and gas where for years 
we blocked the development of our own energy supplies, our own oil 
supplies, and now we are down here trying to blame the President and 
others for the high cost of gasoline.
  If we track what happens on many of the votes--I know I have heard on 
this floor that the oil reserves in Alaska wouldn't make that big a 
difference. But we know that only a 2- or 3-percent increase in our 
supply at this time would dramatically reduce the cost of gasoline. Yet 
on all of these dates over the years, going back to 1991, consistently 
our Democratic colleagues have voted to block the development of oil 
reserves in ANWR, and we see the price of gasoline going up consistent 
with those votes.
  I have heard on this floor for a number of years that the 5-percent 
additional supply that would be provided by ANWR would make no 
difference in the cost of gasoline. Yet we saw during Katrina, when we 
lost 5 percent of our supply, what it did to the cost of gasoline and 
what it is doing today.
  We can't continue to block what needs to be done and then blame other 
people when we have problems because it doesn't get done.
  Today I wish to talk particularly about health care because we have 
gotten word from our Democratic colleagues that they are going to block 
several important provisions that we are going to try to get on the 
floor for debate next week.
  One of those is medical malpractice. A very important component in 
the cost of health care is the fact that we are suing doctors out of 
business. We have 20 States now that are considered in crisis because 
of medical liability. We have another 24 that show warning signs, which 
means the loss of doctors, the loss of access to care, and less 
insurance available. South Carolina is in that group.
  Let me share some statistics that should get folks' attention: 59 
percent of physicians believe that the fear of liability discourages 
discussion and thinking about ways to reduce health care costs. The 
costs of defensive medicine are estimated to be between $70 billion and 
$126 billion a year. I think I need to say that again. The cost of 
defensive medicine is up to $126 billion a year to try to cover doctors 
from liability because of unlimited lawsuits against doctors. Blue 
Cross, a major insurer, when surveyed said it is already a serious 
problem as far as adding to the cost of health insurance premiums.
  There are many things we can do to fix that, but folks need to 
understand the real costs because I know my Democratic colleagues will 
say that it is not a factor.
  The only people getting rich from medical malpractice are the 
personal injury lawyers. Keep these things in mind during our debate 
next week: More than 70 percent of the claims against doctors or 
hospitals are dropped or dismissed before they reach a verdict, but 
even if they are dismissed, the claims costs are $18,000 in legal 
expenses. In 2004, medical liability costs that were settled--when 
cases are settled--the legal costs were $60,000. In the cases where 
they actually went to trial but the doctor or hospital won, the average 
cost jumped to $94,000.
  The Wall Street Journal points out a number of facts like these, but 
one of them should really hit home. They were using Texas as an example 
because Texas has made some reforms that we will be considering for our 
country that have made a big difference.
  Hospital premiums to protect against lawsuits more than doubled in 
Texas between 2000 and 2003. But I think probably the most 
disheartening statistic I have seen is that between 1999 and 2002, the 
annual per-bed cost for litigation protection for nursing homes went 
from $250 to $5,000. That is what nursing homes have to pay just for 
liability coverage for malpractice lawsuits. That is at a time when we 
have a new and large wave of retirees whom we need help when it comes 
to nursing homes. Yet we are suing them out of their hospital beds.
  We know we can fix this. Part of the problem, I am afraid, is right 
here in Congress. As I said before, the only people really getting rich 
from the system we have now are personal injury lawyers. One statistic 
to remember is

[[Page 7097]]

between 2003 and 2004, personal injury lawyers gave $102 million to 
House and Senate candidates. They got a good payback. In fact, it was a 
10,000-percent rate of return because during that same period, over $18 
billion in malpractice awards were given during 1 year--over $18 
billion. We cannot continue to allow this to be a part of our health 
care system and then come down here and complain about the cost of 
health care.
  We know that many doctors are leaving rural areas and no longer 
delivering babies. This is a fact. This is not political rhetoric. We 
know that in many places around the country, if someone is injured 
badly with a head injury in a car accident and they go to an emergency 
room, there are no neurologists there because they won't take calls 
because they are likely to get paid very little from Medicaid or 
another insurance company, but they could lose millions of dollars 
because of lawsuits.
  There are some commonsense things we can do, and we have seen this 
happen in Texas with their reforms that we will be looking at next 
week. I implore my colleagues to consider what Texas did, and before we 
get into all the misrepresentations, the malpractice bills we are going 
to talk about next week do not put any limits on economic damages and 
allow up to $750,000 for pain and suffering. So a person who is injured 
could get their salary for life, all their health care paid for, and up 
to $750,000 additional money for pain and suffering in Texas. What that 
has done in just 1 year is cut their lawsuits in half. The cost of 
liability insurance has been reduced almost 20 percent in just a short 
period of time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 more 
minutes.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
  Mr. LEAHY. I won't object assuming there will be 2 additional minutes 
on this side.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Time is equally divided.
  Without objection, it is so ordered.
  Mr. DeMINT. Mr. President, I will conclude again with the hope and 
the request that we can debate this honestly. Certainly we do not want 
patients being hurt and not being compensated, but we also don't want 
many more patients not finding a doctor, not being able to afford their 
health care or to get health insurance. These are things we can fix if 
we work together.
  If you notice on my chart, I don't accuse this of being Republican or 
Democrat. It is just an issue we need to address. We need to do 
something commonsense with medical malpractice. Please, let us put the 
bill on the floor next week for debate.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, is the Senator from Massachusetts seeking 
recognition for a unanimous consent request?
  Mr. KENNEDY. I am. I was going to make comments for 2 or 3 minutes 
and then make a consent request.
  Mr. LEAHY. I was going to proceed for about 5 minutes, but if the 
Senator from Massachusetts wishes to go first, that is fine.
  Mr. KENNEDY. I will wait.

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