Philadelphia Injury Attorney Blog

Americans For Insurance Reform (AIR) has released 14 new fact sheets concerning medical malpractice and tort issues that may be part of discussions by Congress and the Administration in developing national health care proposals. According to a press release filed, the “fact sheets” together support the view that the legal rights of injured patients should be preserved and that any weakening of those rights will unfairly burden medical malpractice victims. Joanne Doroshow, AIR co-founder and Executive Director of The Center for Justice & Democracy stated “provision of health care should never be compromised or accomplished by taking away the right to trial by jury for someone legitimately injured, or by reducing the accountability of any hospital or provider that endangers patients. The fact sheets are titled as follows:

1. The Insurance Industry’s Investment Practices - Not the Legal System - Cause High
Malpractice Insurance Costs;
2. Costs of the Current Medical Malpractice System Are Much Lower than People Think;
3. The Defensive Medicine Myth;
4. Health Courts Are Unconstitutional;
5. Health Courts and Other Alternative Systems Are Intolerably Fair to Injured Patients;
6. The Significant Costs of Alternative Systems;
7. The Problem of Medical Malpractice and the Amount of Malpractice Itself;
8. Far from Being “Broken”, The Current Medical Malpractice System Works Well.
9. Litigation Improves Patient Safety and Establishes Responsibility for Errors.
10. Fear of Litigation Is Not Why Doctors Fail to Report Errors or Communicate with
Their Patients.
11. Juries Versus Cost Savings Is an Unacceptable Trade Off;
12. Eliminating Juries Means Fewer Cases Will Settle;
13. Lowering Insurance Costs for Doctors Requires Insurance Industry Reform;
14. Critical patient safety resolution will remove or sanction the small number of
bad doctors committing malpractice.