Michael Burgess: “2 years ago this month, this House passed a meaningful bill to reform medical liability in this country. Since that…”

“2 years ago this month, this House passed a meaningful bill to reform medical liability in this country. Since that time, of course, the other body has failed to even have a vote on this important piece of legislation, so now we are going to see this legislation again in this Congress. But in the 2 years that have intervened, in my home State of Texas, we passed a bill and a constitutional amendment that allowed caps on noneconomic damages within the State of Texas. I think it would behoove this House to examine what has happened in the State of Texas since that time. Since then, medical liability insurers have returned to the State. We had fallen from 17 insurers to two, and now we stand at 14, with several insurers having come back into the State with rates that were flat or, in fact, lower. In fact, Texas Medical Liability Trust, my old insurer of record, has dropped rates from 12 percent right after the constitutional amendment passed and another 5 percent this year, for a total of 17 percent. But most importantly, Mr. Speaker, the Cristus Health Care System in south Texas, a self-insured hospital system, realized a $12 million savings in the first 9 months of this legislation, money that was put back into nurses' salaries, capital expansion, the types of things that we want hospitals to be doing, not paying for noneconomic damages.”