Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, the floor leader has invited us to stick to the facts, so I want to stick to the facts in order to clear up some of the propaganda I have heard today for this terrible bill. First of all, it has nothing to do with ``groundless cases or frivolous claims,'' because the draconian new limits proposed in their legislation applied only to valid claims in serious cases. It has nothing to do with groundless cases and frivolous claims. That is an irrelevant distraction from their own legislation, which is an attempt to reduce what you can recover with a perfectly valid claim when a jury has awarded you damages. Number two, the floor leader says that it would not apply in the case of someone being raped in a nursing home. Perhaps he thinks it wouldn't apply to my constituent, a 15-year-old girl who got raped by her dentist. But as I read the bill, it says, ``healthcare lawsuit means any action against a healthcare provider,'' and that includes anyone who is providing healthcare. So if a nursing home is providing healthcare or a dentist is providing healthcare, they would be covered by the law. But I would invite the floor leader to clear this up, because if he is representing now that rapes of patients in a nursing home or in a dentist's office don't count, that should be definitive legislative history that we establish today because we tried to amend the bill to that effect in committee and the majority voted it down.…”