Medical Liability Reform

Via the Protect Patients Now mailing list, medical liability reform will be up for a vote in the Senate next week. Somehow, I don't think they'd object to my reproducing the email here.

After being postponed a week, today the U.S. Senate introduced important medical liability reform legislation and is scheduled to vote on it next week. Bill S.22, The Medical Care and Access Protection Act of 2006, includes reform provisions which have proven to be effective at the state level, including reasonable limits on non-economic damages.

As you know, the U.S. House of Representatives has repeatedly passed reform legislation, only to be blocked in the Senate. That's why we need to make sure our voices are heard by every U.S. Senator -- right away.

Please take the time now to contact your Senators and urge them to support S. 22 and pass the commonsense reforms needed to end medical lawsuit abuse. And please remember to spread the word to your friends, family, colleagues and neighbors and ask them to contact their Senators using the Protect Patients Now website.

I'll be sure to keep you updated as this issue develops. Thank you for your continued support.

I looked for whether Americans for Free Choice in Medicine had anything further to say on this at their web site, but only found a short statement in support of liability reform.

Here is a PDF file of the entire bill from the link above. The summary sounds reasonable to me, but if anyone with some time and a legal turn of mind -- I only joke about being a lawyer! -- looks it over and sees problems, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

-- CAV