Tort Reform Bill Causes Major Concerns for Consumer Groups, Patient Groups

A number of consumer watchdog groups and patient safety organizations are speaking out against a proposed bill that they say is intended to shield negligent doctors and the makers of defective drugs and medical devices from patients they have injured. 

A letter on behalf of 24 different organizations, representing about 50 million people, was sent to U.S. House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith asking him to reject a tort reform bill (pdf) that would make it more difficult for citizens to bring lawsuits in cases of medical malpractice, defective medical devices and drugs, and nursing home neglect and abuse cases.

On January 23, the Help Efficient, Accessible, Low-cost, Timely Healthcare (HEALTH) Act of 2011 (H.R. 5) was introduced. It proposes to limit the ability of people to bring lawsuits if they are injured or killed by negligent medical care by putting in place stringent statute of limitations and limiting the liability of corporations that make bad drugs or defective medical devices.

The bill would place a $250,000 cap on non-economic damages. It would also only allow patients one year to bring a lawsuit after the date the injury should have been discovered, and they would have a maximum of three years to bring the suit after the injury occurred whether it was discovered or not.

Joint and several liability would also be eliminated under the bill, which has been a part of common law for centuries. It would also restrict punitive damages to cases where the defendant intended to injure plaintiffs or knew about the risk of injury and deliberately failed to avoid causing the injuries.

Proponents of the bill say that the tort reforms would reduce the cost of healthcare and lower insurance burdens on doctors. But opponents of the bill said in their letter that the legislation would do none of those things, and would only serve to give companies and nursing homes incentives to act with disregard.

In addition to shielding large medical and pharmaceutical corporations from lawsuits from injured citizens, the groups say that the proposed legislation would not provide the proposed savings to the U.S. healthcare system.

“Many of us already live in states with ‘caps’ and other laws that make it difficult or impossible to have cases heard before judges and juries, as this legislation would do,” the letter states. “These laws have had terrible consequences for injured patients who have been shut out of courts altogether, and for patient safety, in general.”

In fact, the letter claims, when malpractice caps prevent patients from going after negligent doctors and companies, they are forced to rely on taxpayer funded programs to care for their injuries and disabilities, meaning that the tort reform laws actually result in more money being taken out of taxpayer pockets.

Signatories of the letter include the Alliance for Justice, the Center for Justice and Democracy, the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, the National Consumer’s League, the National Consumer Voice for Quality Long-Term Care, the National Women’s Health Network, Public Citizen and a number of state groups.