Pete Sessions: “the Pregnancy and Trauma Care Access Protection Act of 2004 that is now before the Senate is a matter of very real…”

“the Pregnancy and Trauma Care Access Protection Act of 2004 that is now before the Senate is a matter of very real importance to real Americans. I have a good friend, an obstetrician, in Mobile, AL. We go to church together. He teaches Sunday school class. He is a former president of the State association, as I recall. He was talking to me at church a few months ago about a doctor who left the practice. His malpractice insurance was around $80,000, and he delivered around 80 children a year. That is $1,000 per delivery that doctor paid for malpractice insurance. This is a reality. I was with a doctor I know from the group that treats my mother in Mobile, AL, just a week ago, and he told me people in the profession are retiring earlier and earlier because they are getting tired of the stress and strain of being micro-managed through litigation; that people do not have to do that after a number of years and good people are leaving the practice over this issue. Everybody in this body will say we need to do something about it; it is time for us to fix it; there is a problem; and we need to do this and that. But there is a strong influence, I have to say, from the trial bar in the Senate. They are very active politically, everybody knows it. They are aggressive, and they contribute large sums of money. Just a very few lawyers contribute large sums of money to political campaigns, and so far they have been able to block reforms.”