Chuck Grassley: “Finally, if I could, let's not forget about class action lawsuits where multimillion-dollar damages are the name of the…”

“Finally, if I could, let's not forget about class action lawsuits where multimillion-dollar damages are the name of the game. So here again we peel off the lottery ticket. You can have class action lawsuits in State courts. You can have class action lawsuits in Federal court. So bingo again. Kennedy-McCain has no limits on class action lawsuits. It even creates new grounds for bringing class action cases. As you can see, everybody wins--every lawyer, that is--with the trial lawyers' lottery ticket. What we get back to then is that we are more concerned about treatment for trial lawyers, not treatment for patients. It seems ironic that the very individuals this bill claims to protect are the ones who lose. Despite what its sponsors say, the bill before us exposes employers to the constant threat of litigation, even for simple administrative tasks and clerical errors. What is the ultimate result? What everybody says they do not want to ever happen. People lose coverage. When this sort of perverse incentive is out there to threaten small business, particularly those that are self-insured--because they do not want to put in jeopardy their lifetime of work but want to create jobs, so they can be part of the community, so they can have good workers and pay their workers well-- and, most importantly, workers want good fringe benefits; and the No. 1 fringe benefit they want is health insurance--it puts it in jeopardy employer-based coverage.”