Michael Burgess: “I come tonight to report on the activity of the House policy committee this week. The Subcommittee on Health met for a…”

“I come tonight to report on the activity of the House policy committee this week. The Subcommittee on Health met for a hearing on medical liability insurance, and the purpose of this meeting was to outline in the current concept of medical liability reform and to point to some of the proven successes and to look at the future of reform. This meeting, which was held on Tuesday of this week, was attended by Jose Montemayor, who is the insurance commissioner of the State of Texas. Mr. Montemayor was appointed by then-Governor George Bush and has continued in that capacity since 1998. We were also joined by Dr. Brennan Cassidy, a board-certified emergency physician from the State of California, who spoke on the status of tort reform in that State. Paul Bahcarach, the president and CEO of Uniontown Hospital, was at our meeting and spoke about the particular problems that they are experiencing in Pennsylvania. And Donald Palmisano, a physician and lawyer from New Orleans, who is the past president of the American Medical Association, spoke to us with considerable passion on what he believed some of the answers might be in the arena of tort reform.”