Mike Honda: “for the fourth time in the 5 years I have been a member of the United States Congress, I will be opposing a flawed…”

“for the fourth time in the 5 years I have been a member of the United States Congress, I will be opposing a flawed Republican bill which would limit damage awards to patients injured by medical malpractice. While Republicans claim their measure would reduce insurance costs for doctors by discouraging frivolous lawsuits--which they blame for driving up insurance premiums and reducing access to health care for patients--the Republicans legislation completely ignores the rate-setting process followed by the insurance industry. Furthermore, a 2002 study by the Congressional Budget Office found that the effect of even a very large reduction in malpractice costs would have a small effect on individual health care premiums. This bill broadly defines ``medical malpractice action'' to protect HMOs, insurance companies, nursing homes and drug and device manufactures for a broad range of liabilities, including suits by physicians against those companies. Furthermore, the bill caps non- economic awards for pain and suffering of $250,000, and punitive damages at $250,000 or twice economic damages, whichever is greater. All this measure really does is place legal obstacles on patients injured by wrongful conduct. Under this bill, individuals face time limits that would require an injured person to file health care lawsuits no later than three years after the date of the injury or one year after discovering the alleged malpractice, whichever occurs first.…”