Political Quotes

“prior to coming to the U.S. Congress, I served 14 years in my State general assembly. I spent a lot of time on this issue, dealing with issues like caps on noneconomic damages, collateral sources, periodic payments, joint and several liability modifications and venue shopping. I just heard some statements from the other side, well-intentioned, but, I must respectfully say, misguided, that simply mandating a premium reduction will not solve this problem. What will happen is what happened in my State. In 1975, a State-administered medical liability program was created because no one wanted to write insurance in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in 1975. We were in a crisis. That did not solve the problem. That State-administered program is broke. My general assembly has appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to pay doctors' medical liability premiums and hospitals' premiums. That is what will happen if you mandate that premium reduction. It sounds good, but it does not fix it. The Governor of my State, Ed Rendell, a Democrat, I talked to his insurance commissioner a couple of years ago. I said, if this is an insurance problem, let's look at the numbers. For every dollar paid at that time in medical liability premiums, there was $1.27 in losses incurred; $1 in, $1.27 out. That is an insurance problem. No one wants to write insurance.…”