Health Care Bill takes away patients' rights!

This year, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a measure that will take away your rights if you are a healthcare patient. If you are injured, the act will limit your ability to exercise your right to a jury trial and seek compensation for that injury. This is what Tort Reform does - it takes away your rights. The purpose of tort reform is to protect the profits of the insurance companies. It does nothing to help doctors or hospitals.

A measure like this will lower the quality of care patients receive. It will also increase the number of deaths and injuries sufffered by people due to negligent care.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Help Efficient, Accessible, Low Cost, Timely, Health Care (HEALTH) Act of 2011" (H.R. 5) on March 22, 2012. This bill aims to take away the legal rights of injured patients, removing any incentives to improve patient safety, and leave people at risk for more injures from negligent care. This bill would impose one-size-fits-all caps on damages, not just when injured by medical negligence, but also defective drugs, medical devices, or abuse suffered in nursing homes.

Washington, DC—The following is a statement from American Association for Justice (AAJ) President Gibson Vance in response to H.R. 5, a “medical liability reform” bill that was introduced late yesterday in the U.S. House of Representatives:
“After repealing a bill that provided health insurance to over 30 million Americans, the next proposal from the new House leadership is to take away the legal rights of injured patients, remove any incentive to improve safety, and leave people at risk for more injuries from negligent care. This is the most perverse form of legislating imaginable.
“Ten years ago, the Institute of Medicine found that as many as 98,000 people die every year from preventable medical errors. Recent studies have confirmed the problem is only getting worse.
“This bill will impose severe, one-size-fits-all caps on damages that injured patients can seek – not just when injured by medical negligence, but also by defective drugs, medical devices, or abuse suffered in nursing homes. It even extends this cap to health care providers that intentionally harm or kill patients, as well as insurance companies that refuse to pay just claims for medical bills.
“The bill is beyond extreme. Its authors should focus on real measures that will improve patient safety, not provide welfare to drug and insurance companies that stand to gain the most from this proposal.
“By removing legal accountability, attention to safety will go down and more people will suffer injuries and death from negligent care. Congress should put patient safety first.”
 
Opposition to H.R. 5 has ranged from patient safety groups (http://www.citizen.org/documents/Letter-opposing-HR5-20110131.pdf) to conservative legal scholars and elected officials (http://www.fightingforjustice.org/content/constitutional-conservatives-federal-tort-reform-violates-states%E2%80%99-rights-and-10th-amendment). The Institute of Medicine found that up to 98,000 people die every year from preventable medical errors, which is the sixth leading cause of death. Tort reform protects negligent health providers and takes away the rights of injured patients.