Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | B | Best's Review

Line drive: advocates of medical-liability reform legislation will take on federal and state lawmakers again. (Medical Liability: Property/Casualty).

Article Excerpt
Republican gains in the November 2002 election have some predicting improved prospects for medical-liability reform legislation during this Congressional session. Last September, House members approved a reform bill, H.R. 4600, that capped damages awarded to patients claiming harm by doctors and limited fees to lawyers in malpractice cases. The bill went to the Senate, but no action was taken before Congress adjourned for the year, effectively killing the measure and sending proponents back to square one.

While federal reform legislation is expected to move more swiftly through the House this time around, it will again be challenged in the U.S. Senate where 60 votes are needed to cut off debate, said David Farmer, head of the Alliance of American Insurers' federal affairs office in Washington, D.C. The Senate is split 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats, with one Independent.

With soaring malpractice insurance rates threatening to disrupt medical services in at least 11 states, some observers expect that more state legislatures will step into the breach and pass tort-reform laws to help stabilize these rates. Time is on the states' side; state legislatures were to start their new sessions in early January, while policy retreats for Congressional Democrats and Republicans were planned for late January and early February, respectively. "The states probably will start to produce reforms on their own because there's tremendous pressure on the remaining malpractice carriers in place," Farmer said.

The American Medical Association reports that between 1999 and 2000, median professional-liability jury awards increased 43%, causing medical-liability insurers to raise rates and prompting some physicians to pack up their practices and exit some states, notably West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Mississippi. Carriers also have exited the market. In late 2001, St. Paul Cos., the largest writer of medical-liability coverage in the United States, withdrew from the market, citing increasing losses and the inability to maintain a profit. Other insurers have become insolvent or have severely limited their areas of coverage, thus limiting the availability of...