Dan Quayle: “I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his work on this important piece of legislation. Mr. Chairman, I rise in…”

“I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his work on this important piece of legislation. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of H.R. 5, the PATH Act, because our country is in urgent need of medical malpractice reform. Currently, we have a jackpot justice system that is not based in reality, and it's badly damaging our country's health care system. Profiteering attorneys know this. And that's why the number of malpractice suits has been precipitously rising year after year. Back in the 1960s, one out of seven physicians would have had a malpractice claim over their entire lifetime. Today, it's one in seven physicians are sued each year. That is an astronomical jump in the number of claims that are being put on doctors. And the doctors are now being forced out of the profession even when they haven't done anything wrong. The practice of defensive medicine is harming the quality of care and pushing up costs. The enormous expense of ensuring a doctor against liability is making health care inflation much worse, not to mention the fact that the current system is damaging the doctor-patient relationship. It damages it in a way because every doctor has to see every interaction with the patient as a potential lawsuit. That is not what the doctor-patient relationship should be built on. It should be built on mutual respect and trust.…”