What Is Your Family Worth Under The Republican Malpractice Bill?

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The Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently passed a bill intended to make things much worse for people injured by medical malpractice.  While there are many provisions that hurt victims of malpractice, today I am going to discuss only damage caps.  Regardless of whether you live in Arizona, where our state constitution forbids caps on damages, or some other state where they are permitted, the new law imposes a cap on “non-economic damages” in the amount of $250,000.00.  Non-economic damages are those which cannot be computed in dollars and cents.  They include the death of loved ones whose loss does not translate into dollars and cents.

See that picture of a happy family?  If one of those two lovely children were killed by a drunk driver in an automobile accident, the jury would be allowed to award the grieving mother and father whatever amount it deemed reasonable for the loss they had suffered.  It could be hundreds of thousands of dollars.  It could even be a million dollars or more.  Certainly here in Arizona, there would be no limit to the award, so long as it was reasonable.  The jury could even award punitive damages against the drunk driver.  The story would be different under the new House bill, however, if the child was killed during surgery because the surgeon was drunk and made a fatal mistake.

To what other losses would this hard-hearted limit apply?  We have covered the death of a child.  The jury, which is never to be told that its award will be reduced to $250,000.00, will have any award it makes reduced to $250,000.00 because the child was not working and not bringing money into the family.  How about a stay-at-home wife?  Conservative Republicans claim to like it when a mother stays home to raise and guide her children. While an argument might be made that the family will suffer an economic loss when it has to replace all the work Mom did before she died, the loss of her love, her guidance to her children and her bond with her husband must all cap out at $250,000.00 total.  Too bad if she had a large family with many children.  It will be a good lesson in sharing for them.

If the doctor cuts off the wrong leg, you will get money to buy a prosthetic leg but no more than $250,000.00 for the inconvenience of being on one leg for the rest of your life.  God gave you two kidneys.  One of them can’t be worth more than $250,000.00.  I could go on but I won’t.  I am sure you get the idea.

These caps are supposed to be part of a “tort reform” to address “frivolous” malpractice suits.  Any time politicians want to take away some of your rights, they call it “reform.”  That these caps address frivolous suits is clearly a lie.  The caps only come into play when the jury decides that the doctor or the hospital has done something wrong, in other words, when the jury has found that the suit is not frivolous.  Whom do the caps hurt worst?  It is not the person with a minor injury but the most seriously injured people who are hurt the worst by having politicians in Washington decide what a jury in Phoenix ought to do.  And they decide that without ever knowing any of the facts of the case.  The facts of the case are irrelevant to the actual purpose of the imposition of caps on damages.

So why are those most seriously injured by proven malpractice required to have their non-economic losses capped at $250,000.00, an amount surely never to be increased as long as the Republicans control any part of Congress?  Who benefits when doctors and hospitals are given special treatment at the expense of the regular people whom they have injured?  You do the math.  Campaign contributions in, restrictive laws favoring donors out.  Believe it or not, Republicans used to care about people.  Not anymore.

Posted in Doctors, Health Care Costs, Hospital Negligence, Hospitals, Lawsuits, Malpractice caps, medical errors, Medical Malpractice, medical malpractice claims, medical malpractice damages caps, medical malpractice lawsuits, medical mistakes, Medical Negligence, Secrecy, Surgical Errors, tort reform, Verdicts |