Gus Bilirakis: “In the previous Congress I coauthored consensus health reform legislation with our former colleague, Dr. Roy Rowland of…”

“In the previous Congress I coauthored consensus health reform legislation with our former colleague, Dr. Roy Rowland of Georgia, health reform that sought to bring to the table issues upon which broad agreement existed in the Congress and among the public. It became one of the leading health reform proposals at that time, and it was the one truly bipartisan health bill considered by the 103d Congress. One of the consensus issues in our bill was medical malpractice reform. It was an issue upon which many Members of this body on both sides of the aisle agreed. In fact, it was a consensus item addressed in most of the health reform bills introduced in the previous Congress. I have no reason to believe that medical malpractice reform is any less of a priority in this Congress. All of these bills included a $250,000 cap on noneconomic damages, just as does this amendment. Did the 98 Members who signed onto our legislation, 36 of them Democrats, support this cap because they wished to deny an individual the full legal redress to which he or she was entitled? The answer, of course, is no. Opponents of this amendment today claim that we cannot quantify the pain and suffering of a victim of injury. I tell them this, I cannot agree with them more. I believe that our legal system should pay the complete costs of injury, including lifetime medical costs, rehabilitation, disfigurement, or other forms of actual damage, without limit.”