Michael Burgess: “last week in this House, we passed yet another version of the medical liability reform act in this Congress. We passed…”

“last week in this House, we passed yet another version of the medical liability reform act in this Congress. We passed similar legislation in March 2003. That bill that we passed last year and likely the bill that we pass this year is going to stop dead on the other side of the Capitol and will not be enacted. It is a shame, Mr. Speaker. Right now we have a President in the White House who has said he will sign this bill into law if it is given to him. We have a candidate running for the office of President who has either voted ``no'' or been absent when that vote has come up across the rotunda on the other side of the Capitol. Mr. Speaker, this is important. I met with a group of doctors back in my district this weekend. There is no greater peril to our profession of medicine than the current medical justice system. The reforms that we have passed in this House closely mirror the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act of 1975 passed in the State of California that has brought some semblance of sanity back to the medical justice system in that State. Residents of the other States, physicians in the other States, and their patients deserve no less.”