Richard Hudson: “I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this issue, and I also would like to express my appreciation to my colleague…”

“I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this issue, and I also would like to express my appreciation to my colleague from Tennessee. We all care about patients and we all care about patients seeking justice, but I just think maybe we disagree how to get there at this point. The one point he raised about the crocodile tears, the way he describes the Sorry Provision, look, doctors are human beings and sometimes things happen. It should be appropriate for a physician to be able to express those feelings that they are sorry that that happened without that being seen as some sign that there is guilt involved. So I think the Sorry Provision is important because the doctor-patient relationship is very important, and these are human beings. The other argument that was raised, that it is an undue burden to have to have an expert witness, listen. A lot of these cases are very detailed and very specific. If you are talking about a cardiothoracic event, you need a cardiothoracic surgeon to discuss that. A lot of these speciality fields, it is important that you have someone from that field as an expert. Frankly, there are folks out there who have the profession of being professional witnesses. They travel around the country and testify on behalf of the plaintiff bar. Frankly, I think we need to have experts testifying that are qualified to talk about those very specific cases that they are testifying against.…”