Tim Scott: “It is ironic that when you have a bill entitled Patients' Bill of Rights, we are spending all of our time stripping the…”

“It is ironic that when you have a bill entitled Patients' Bill of Rights, we are spending all of our time stripping the patients of those rights. There are many issues in this amendment, about 10 different issues, we have got 20 minutes to explain them all which is about 2 minutes per issue as we strip our patients of their fundamental rights and traditional laws when they are victims of negligence. Questions like the statute of limitations. When do you lose your right to sue? What is a reasonable amount of time before you have to file your suit or lose your rights? Two minutes is not enough time to explain that. A cap on noneconomic damages. When you lose your sight, lose a limb, what is fair, particularly if you were nonworking, did not have any economic losses? What is fair when you suffer a situation like that? States have dealt with that. The amount in this bill is one of the lowest found anywhere in the country. The complicated issue of joint and several liability. If everybody agrees that you have got a $100,000 case, how do you ever collect if the HMO is partly at fault, the doctor is partly at fault, maybe the nurse is, maybe the hospital, how do you ever get recovery, particularly if one of them is about to go bankrupt? We cannot discuss that in 2 minutes.”